Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - This Week in Stupid (18⧸06⧸2017)

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June 18, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

22:17

This Week in Stupid (18⧸06⧸2017)

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	Hello everyone, welcome to This Week in Stupid for the 18th of June 2017.
	This week we're going to be asking the hard questions, the ones that really matter, and by God, we're gonna get answers.
	I don't know about you, but I've always had my suspicions, and when Mark Zuckerberg comes out and says, look, I am not a lizard, all I can say is, well, that's what a lizard would say.
	Isn't it, Mark?
	So Mark Zuckerberg hosted a Q ⁇ A town hall using the social networks live streaming, and obviously someone wanted to know whether the 32-year-old was actually a reptile disguised as a human.
	Mark, are the allegations true that you're secretly a lizard?
	I'm gonna have to go with no on that.
	He added, I'm not a lizard.
	The Facebook founder paused to lick his lips.
	Well, of course he's not just gonna fucking say it.
	Duh!
	If he's pretending to be a lizard, he's not just gonna come out and go, well, since you asked so nicely, yeah, I actually am, but I was keeping it secret.
	F ⁇ ing idiots.
	What you have to do is go through the footage as closely as you can and find a part where he blinks and the footage blurs, and that's proof that he's actually a lizard.
	I don't have a segue into this next story, but I think that Lacey Green has been officially excommunicated from the Church of Feminism.
	Lacey Green is a significant force on YouTube.
	Her Sex Plus series has provided several people with accurate, non-judgmental sex education that is not often seen in the United States.
	Okay, I just want to pause here a sec.
	That's actually a really nice thing for them to say.
	And one of the things that I've noticed when watching the social justice response to Lacey Green's apostasy is the denunciation of her past work.
	And I mean, it's not like I watched a lot of her past work that was non-feminism based, but I didn't see anyone complaining about it.
	And as soon as she said, well, actually, I've been talking to people on the other side, and maybe they aren't all Hitler, then all of a sudden it was just constant.
	Constant, Lacey Green's work has always been shit, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And the reason I hate it is because it's not about critique, it's about political delegitimization.
	Lacey Green is now an enemy, and everything about your enemy has to be bad.
	You can't hold any respect for them.
	She also made videos discussing gender equality and sexuality and other social justice topics.
	Her videos gained a respectable following in addition to no small amount of men's rights activist trolls, which led her to take a break.
	However, she recently returned to YouTube and made a video called Taking the Red Pill, where she announces that she intends to have debates with alt-right figures to create dialogue and bridge the divide between those who advocate for social justice and those who oppose it.
	I'm sure there are many, many, many people in the alt-right who oppose social justice.
	I have yet to see Lacey Green interact with anyone who is actually alt-right.
	This inevitably led to backlash from those who once considered her a friend and ally, mainly people of colour and LGBTQ plus folks, after which she published a second video defending her actions, claiming that she felt attacked from all sides.
	I think that's interesting because the anti-social justice community on YouTube seems to have embraced Lacey Green's willingness to talk.
	And it's important to remember that I don't- I mean, I think that she still considers herself a feminist.
	The problem is that she's just willing to talk to these people.
	And that's why she's getting this backlash, which should tell you everything you need to know about these people.
	However, this sort of behaviour is not uncommon for white women, even those who hold progressive political views.
	Of course.
	It's a racial thing.
	Over the course of history, we've always chosen our race over our gender in order to advance our social standing and gain the respect of our male counterparts.
	Even if that means leaving women of colour in the dust, as long as we get ours, what happens to everyone else doesn't matter.
	Imagine reducing the history of colonialism and race relations to women siding with men.
	Well, I say that, but you could just read this article to see how absolutely asinine that is.
	White women betraying our sisters of colour has become a particularly hot topic in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, with 52% of our demographic betraying their gender.
	According to CNN exit polls, white women who lean left aren't free from criticism in this sort of behaviour.
	Across all spectrums, we engage in the weaponization of our perceived innocence in order to further our status in the world.
	Whoa, did you just did you just call out female privilege?
	Examination of the toxic nature of white womanhood often leads to cries of misogyny.
	Holy shit, she is woke.
	But the thing is, do you not think that this is a bit of a sliding scale?
	You start with going, well, actually, isn't white womanhood a bit toxic?
	And what do you think the next step in that logical chain is?
	Is there any other toxic womanhood around?
	At all?
	Do you think?
	No, of course not.
	It's just the white people.
	However, those making this claim are missing a crucial point.
	When critiquing white womanhood, it's the whiteness that's being focused on as a problem that needs fixing.
	As with the previous example, aren't you worried about people reversing this logic?
	And eventually, when toxic whiteness has been dealt with, do you not think that maybe some people might start to say something like, how about that problem of toxic blackness?
	But I love this.
	Being a part of one marginalized community does not mean that you don't benefit from systemic oppression in other areas.
	Women are not a marginalized community.
	We know this because most of them voted against you, and because women are the majority of the population anyway.
	It isn't enough for us white women to just say that we stand with women of colour.
	Oh, us white women.
	It's that it's an us now, is it?
	Now you've conscripted every other white woman into your mission.
	They have to do as you say on the basis that they were born white and female.
	Bad luck, ladies.
	We must actually show up when we are needed, speak up when it's uncomfortable to do so, and actively work against whiteness as a social construct, so that liberation for all people can finally be achieved.
	Except for the white people.
	They're already liberated and that's a problem.
	We must also learn to hold our own accountable when they do something that harms marginalized groups, even if it's unintentional.
	Okay, what has Lacey Green done that harms marginalized groups?
	And this is my favourite part.
	Lacey's decision to turn her back on women of colour and LGBTQ plus folks is something that several white women have done.
	I completely reject this characterization of anything Lacey has done.
	Nothing about her talking to people who disagree with social justice can be characterized as her turning her back on women of colour and LGBTQ folks.
	This is nonsense.
	I've said it before, and I'm sure I'm going to have to say it again.
	But social justice does not have the monopoly on these people.
	Especially given how so many of them oppose feminism and social justice.
	You do not get to sit there and say, we own them.
	She carries on and says, but it doesn't change the fact that her actions carry a great deal of harm for many people that she claims to support.
	By validating the opinions of those who hold racist, homophobic and transphobic views, Lacey has shown that she is willing to put the well-being of those she cares about in jeopardy in order to increase her own standing in a white supremacist patriarchal world.
	We can do better, it's time that we did.
	None of that bears any resemblance to reality as other people experience it.
	None of that could be supported in any way, shape or form.
	And they don't care.
	The Huffington Post doesn't care.
	They're just going to publish raw regressive propaganda and pretend like everyone agrees with them.
	Since we're on the subject of women's self-appointed representatives, the term genius alienates women, says red-pilled Cambridge lecturer.
	Seriously, how is that not misogynistic to a feminist?
	A Cambridge lecturer says colleges should refrain from using terms like brilliant, genius and flair, as they could alienate female students.
	Dr. Lucy DeLap, Deputy Director of History and Policy at Cambridge, said those terms were vague and carried assumptions of gender inequality.
	Do they?
	I didn't think so.
	But then, I would say that since I'm a man, I suppose.
	She said a male-dominated environment at Oxbridge must be challenged.
	Students who are arriving at an Oxbridge college can still find it a bit of a male-dominated environment.
	If you look at something as simple as the art on the walls of the college, they're often by men and they depict men, and they're often white men.
	Really?
	At universities in Britain founded in the Middle Ages, you often find statues and paintings of white men on the walls.
	It must be racism.
	We think that a more plural environment would encourage a wider range of people being able to imagine themselves as powerful figures, as success stories, as excelling in academic terms.
	Well that's very interesting, and you might be right, but you've provided no evidence, so I wouldn't know where you are.
	But what I do find even more interesting than that is the fact that you're talking about this male-dominated environment with reference to the paintings on the walls and not the people within the environment.
	And I bet I know why.
	Is it possibly because at say Oxford for example, women are 46% of the student body?
	It's very hard to complain about a lack of representation when you are just about half of the student body and you are getting favourable treatment.
	One might argue that you've really come to the end of things you can realistically complain about now that you are complaining about the paintings on the walls.
	I'm just saying, don't you think that you have something more important you can be doing with your time?
	Because gender equality appears to have been dealt with at these places and in fact, maybe you should move on to doing something that's actually relevant.
	So returning to the professor belittling women, her comments come as the history course at Cambridge is under review.
	We would very much like to see reading lists transform so they reflect more female historians and we would like to see more opportunities to study women's history.
	Well I don't agree that women's history is separate to men's history, but I've got absolutely no objection to more female historians.
	There are some really great contemporary ones around right now in fact.
	We want women to be able to imagine themselves as excelling and owning the space and create an environment that empowers women to succeed.
	We're rewriting the first two years of our history degree to create a wider set of paper choices to make assessment criteria clearer, to really root out the unhelpful and very vague talk of genius, of brilliance, of flair, which carry assumptions of gender inequality and also of class and ethnicity and inequalities.
	In my mind it speaks to an individual of particular and extraordinary ability.
	It doesn't make me think black people and women are stupid, also so are the poor.
	When asked if this was about taking men out of history, Dr. DeLap said there was no attempt to censor male influence.
	It would be impossible to teach history without men in it, and that's true.
	And it would also be impossible to have a Disney movie without a villain in it.
	It really depends how you're approaching it, doesn't it, Doctor?
	But this is the reason why.
	In 2015-16, 31% of women's students gained first in history at Cambridge, compared to 39% of men.
	A university spokeswoman said it was reviewing the subject to see how it could address variations between different groups.
	You don't need to.
	You do not need to address these, because these were not done as group projects.
	There is no group when defining this.
	What you are looking at is the individual effort of the people involved.
	What are you going to do?
	Load the course in favour of women?
	So more women end up doing better in your course?
	That's ridiculous, isn't it?
	I mean, is your course not neutral and objective and designed to give the best education you can provide to anyone who takes it?
	I don't have a segue for this one either, but it seems that Black Lives Matter have conquered the LGBT movement, as the Rainbow Pride flag has been redesigned to represent people of colour.
	And how did they do that?
	Oh yeah, that's right, by putting a brown and black stripe at the top of the flag.
	That makes perfect sense, because the pride colours, the rainbow flag, was a representation of the individual colours and races of people who were represented by it.
	All of those green, blue, and purple people now feel really marginalised, but it's a good thing you've got brown and black on there, otherwise you wouldn't be represented by it.
	Amber Heikes, a queer black woman, is excited about the new gay rights symbol, a pride flag with additional black and brown stripes above the rest of the rainbow, because that's their position on the progressive stack.
	The stripes represent LGBT individuals of colour, a group that can often be overlooked within the overall LGBT umbrella.
	Yeah, I'm sure they are.
	I've got absolutely no doubt that's why Black Lives Matter go out of their way to shut down Pride marches.
	It's a lack of black representation, and it's not that they see a lot of other people doing something and want hegemony over it.
	The flag was unveiled at a recent Pride Month kickoff event in Philadelphia as part of the new campaign, More Colour, More Pride, which aims to recognise non-white LGBT communities as part of a broader Pride movement, starting with the most visible and widely recognized symbol of the LGBT community.
	I mean good god, if that's not a statement of intent, I don't know what is.
	Heikes said she shed a tear when the flag was raised last week for the first time.
	Others at the event had similar reactions.
	To the best of Heck's knowledge, Philadelphia is the first city to publicly and symbolically recognize racial discrimination within the LGBT community.
	To see this at City Hall is such a profound statement.
	Actually, it's not.
	It's really thuggish and tone deaf and dumb.
	Again, I don't want to have to repeat myself, but the Pride flag wasn't representing the colours of the people who made up LGBT.
	Unless of course there are a race of purple people I'm not aware of.
	Or the yellow, or if you're actually referring to the Chinese as yellow, and the Indians as red.
	Philadelphia's downtown neighbourhood, called the Gay Bird, Clever, has faced multiple instances of racial discrimination in the past year, including discriminatory dress code policies at local bars and leaked video of a nightclub owner using a racial slur.
	The campaign and new flag are one way for the city and the Office of LGBT Affairs to address those issues.
	Great.
	I'm sure you're thrilled to be a taxpayer in Philadelphia, aren't you?
	Heikes has said she's already seen the impact of the new flag and event has had on residents in Philadelphia, as well as in other cities across the country.
	A combination of citizens, community groups, and local government officials have reached out to her from multiple cities, including Miami, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, to express their appreciation for the added levels of visibility.
	But with the nationwide support came pushback and criticism.
	Heikes said that the vast majority of critics are, wait for it, gay white men, a sector of the LGBT community that doesn't necessarily understand the issues that LGBT people of colour might face.
	White people do not know what racism looks like, because that's the definition of racism.
	Checkmate Whitey, we have defined it as something you can't understand, so don't even pretend like you understand this.
	Gotcha!
	And finally this week, everything that I've been saying about the left for the last three years is coming true.
	Extremism experts are STARTING to worry about the left.
	They're just starting.
	In the spring of 2016, Brian Levin found himself in an uncomfortable position, trying to save the life of a Ku Klux Klan member.
	Levin, a former New York City cop who studies domestic extremism as the director of the Center for Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, I imagine that's remarkably left-wing, isn't it?
	Was documenting a Klan rally in Anaheim, California, when a counter-protester, Vice, suddenly took a violent swing, forcing Levin to physically place himself between the Klansmen and the furious anti-fascist mob that seemed ready to kill communists.
	They're just communists.
	It made Levin wonder if in his focus on the obvious subject, the white supremacists, he'd overlooked a growing source of extremism, the far left.
	At that point, I said we have something coalescing on the hard left, Levin told Vice News.
	Yeah, welcome to the club.
	But it is nice to see people getting woke to what is actually happening.
	Wednesday morning's shooting of Republican lawmakers at a baseball practice in Virginia seemed to raise the question again.
	The shooter, James T. Hodgkinson, just seemed vice.
	Oh, what's this far-left radical shooting up a bunch of Republicans for?
	I don't know.
	Kind of looks like it might be bringing up the specter of far-left radicalism, though.
	James T. Hodgkinson was a Bernie Sardis supporting man from Illinois with a record of anti-Trump rantings on social media.
	His politics have quickly become a talking point among some conservative pundits seeking a quick political score, proof of a looming leftist campaign against the government.
	Well, I know that you'd like to play this down, but he did go on a shooting rampage trying to kill a Republican at baseball practice.
	I mean, I don't want to overplay the situation, but there have already been two left-wing attempts on Trump's life.
	Both of them shit, which is why nobody talks about them.
	But the will was there, even if the method wasn't.
	Experts in homegrown extremism say it's not so simple.
	Hodgkinson had no known association to any left-wing extremist group, but they also say that the past few months have seen enough of a rise in politically motivated violence from the far left that monitors of right-wing extremism have begun shifting their focus and sounding the alarm.
	You know what, I bet it's a lot like how Islamic State radicals get radicalized.
	They don't have an actual connection to the Islamic State, but they sit there and imbibe nothing but Islamic State propaganda.
	In the same way that I bet this guy did nothing but take in all of this extreme far-left propaganda to the point where he was convinced that the Russians were controlling the government, Trump was going to murder every brown, gay, whatever in sight, and that literally all he could do is pick up a gun and start shooting.
	I mean, it's not necessarily your fault either.
	It's the consequence of, I think, social media bubbles, this kind of filter that everyone blocks out things they don't like, they only take in things they do like, and they end up with dramatically warped world views, thinking that everyone is out to get them and literally the country is on the brink of, oh, I don't know, a fascist takeover maybe?
	A Russian fascist takeover?
	I mean, where would they get that impression though?
	I think we're in a time when we can't ignore extremism from the left, said Oren Segal, the director for the Center of Extremism, an armor of the Anti-Defamation League.
	Glad to see you think so.
	I don't know why you were.
	I don't know why anyone would just ignore extremism because it comes from a particular political wing.
	Over the past few months, the ADL, which hosts regular seminars on homegrown extremism for law enforcement officials, has begun warning of the rising threat posed by far-left groups, most recently at a seminar this past Sunday, when we have anti-fascist, no communist counter-protests, not that they are the same as white supremacists, of course they're not, that can ratchet up the violence at these events, and it means we can see people who are violent on their own be attracted to that.
	I hate to say it, but it feels inevitable.
	Well, it is.
	They're being pumped out of universities.
	And as long as this continues, this will continue to happen.
	I don't know why this is surprising to anyone.
	Why this is even something people need to be persuaded of.
	It is self-evident, is it not?
	The evidence so far is largely anecdotal.
	Is it?
	I think it's largely video, actually.
	Levin says that since December 2015 he's documented nearly two dozen episodes in California where political events turned violent because of agitation on both sides.
	Well that's not anecdotal, is it?
	Something he says he hardly ever saw before.
	Now there are violent clashes on college campuses involving groups like Antifar, the Communist Group taking on the alt-right, and the aggressive anti-Trump rallies intended by members of Redneck Revolt, a new pro-minority anti-supremacist group that encourages its members to train with rifles.
	Oh, that's not going to end badly, is it?
	Online hard leftists increasingly discuss politics in dire terms and rationalize violence as a necessity.
	Yes, they do.
	Even the true inheritor of the traditional progressive activism, or in the case of the punch a Nazi meme, a fun game.
	Yeah, it's pretty psychotic.
	And it's pretty scary how these people are beyond the point of no return.
	They've got no interest in talking to the other side.
	In trying to talk them down from being Nazis in their mind.
	In my mind, you try and persuade people not to be like that before you start shooting or punching them?
	Chris Hamilton, an expert on American extremist movements at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, says anti-authoritarian sentiment may be blurring what seemed to be clear ideological lines.
	If you think about it, leftists never joined the National Rifle Association unless they were radicals.
	They never thought about stockpiling weapons.
	Okay, well maybe we're entering a period where leftists start thinking about things in that way like the eco-radicals did in the 70s.
	Hamilton says that as he browses far left websites and listens to the left-wing talk radio, he hears some of the same sentiments he's been hearing for years on the right.
	These people, that kind of sentiment is popping up in the middle and on the left.
	It's not just in the sovereign citizen movement.
	I'm really worried about the rising civil strife in the US.
	Yeah, well we're all worried about it.
	And I'm glad that after years of treating the left-wing radicals with kid gloves, we can finally accept they have the capacity to be as psychotic and brutal as anyone else.
	Levin is worried about it too.
	The embrace by the far left of tactics that were previously the purview of the right means that the level of political tension in the country can only go up.
	I've been going up and down the state of California meeting with law enforcement officials about this.
	I'm very concerned about it.
	What we're seeing is the democratization of extremism and the tactics of radicalism.
	I've been warning about this and nobody gives a shit.
	Welcome to my world, Mr. Levin.

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