All Episodes
Previous Next
July 9, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
27:19
This Week in Stupid (09⧸07⧸2017)
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hello folks, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 9th of July 2017.
Sorry about the face cam, sorry about the terrible quality of this video, but I've had a really big weekend this weekend, because we had a meetup in London where I interviewed Mejine Noirs, and I met a lot of people, and I've only just got back.
I'm very tired, but I didn't want to not do something, and I didn't have time to arrange someone else to do this, and so I thought I'd just give you a bad quality one.
I'm really sorry.
But there's some good stuff this week.
Oh, and sorry about the fan running in the background as well, if you can hear that.
It's really hot, and I have to have the window open, the fan on.
Otherwise, I'd be sweating to death.
But we'll start with an article from The New Statesman, which is just amazing in the fact that John Elledge has already conceded the argument he's about to make.
Maybe scrapping tuition fees would be regressive.
Perhaps we should do it anyway.
Why?
Why would we do that anyway, if we know it's regressive?
Supporters of fees may be right on the policy, but they're way off on the politics.
So what you're telling me is you're going to spout pure ideology at me.
It's not going to accurately represent reality.
You've already conceded that reality is opposed to your policy here.
One of the more intractable arguments currently consuming the left, or at least the bit of the left that happens to scroll past me as I stare dead-eyed at Twitter of the morning, is about the progressive thing to do about university tuition fees.
Yeah, well, that just already tells me that you're in a bubble, and you know it.
I mean, how many right-wing Twitter accounts do you follow?
How many centrist Twitter accounts do you follow?
One side, which aligns with Labour's current position on ditching them, argues that education is a social good.
No one, no one is on the other side of whether education is a social good, okay?
That the older generation didn't have to pay for theirs, that introducing fees has damaged social mobility, and that loading kids up with debt as they start off in life is about as regressive as you can get.
Really?
I mean, maybe if they get jobs after they get their degrees, they can actually pay it off.
The other side, drawn largely from the part of the centre-left that remains more Corbyn skeptic, replies that not everyone goes to university, and that the biggest beneficiary of higher education is the students themselves, and that scrapping fees means spending billions to benefit well-paid graduates rather than on, I don't know, libraries or surestart centres.
That's a good and accurate representation of what the argument is.
Bourgeois students, who are now well on their way to earning a lot of money, can pay for their own fucking tuition, can't they?
And it's so incredibly selfish.
I want society to pay for my higher education.
Why?
I'm not against it in principle but the thing is you just don't seem to have a very good argument and I'm sorry the idea that it's well ideology is the reason Well, that's not good enough for me.
I love this.
The latter group, in a narrow technical sense, are right about much of this.
I mean, okay.
When you say, in a narrow technical sense, you mean they are correct, and the data bears that out, which we'll go through in a second.
As it happens, Jeremy Corbyn was wrong in his contention that fewer working-class young people are applying to university.
Applications have continued rising, despite the introduction of the highest fees in Europe.
Indeed, access rates are, counterintuitively, worse in Scotland, where there are no fees.
It's really weird how capitalism works and socialism doesn't.
The our parents didn't have to pay fees argument doesn't entirely hold water either.
Most baby boomers didn't pay fees to go to university, but in the vast majority of cases, that was because they didn't go to university.
He's making a great argument against what he's arguing for.
It's amazing.
The proportion of 18-year-olds who stay on in higher education has risen from less than 10% in 1970 to around half today.
That obviously costs more, which is one of the reasons why fees were introduced in the first place.
Yes.
Nonetheless, I feel like those who are pointing this out, all of this as if it settles the matter are wrong in a broader sense.
They may be right in policy terms, you know, the terms that matter, but they're way off on the politics.
Okay, now we just drift off into ideological fantasyland.
We'll see where he goes.
That's because much of the enthusiasm for scrapping tuition fees comes from people who have already paid them.
Most of those who will, in future, by definition, are not yet old enough to vote.
That makes me think that the anger about tuition fees isn't really about tuition fees.
Rather, I think they've become a talisman for something else.
A sense that politics has been pretty shitty towards the younger generation of late, and that they'd like this to stop.
Why?
Why would you even think that?
They're getting- I mean, in this particular case, they're benefiting completely.
They're doing great.
More people than ever are going to university under this system.
So you saying, well, I mean, it should be free and paid for by the state.
What's your argument?
You don't have one.
You're literally, you're arguing on the basis of feels.
Yeah, but we feel this way.
Yeah, but the data says.
Yeah, but feels.
I'm sorry, and I really genuinely mean this.
Why should the working class and their tax money go towards paying for middle-class education?
I would love an answer to this.
Doesn't seem very pro-working class.
It actually seems kind of anti-working class.
Especially as apparently the working class is quite happy taking loans to go to university.
And then they get their degrees, probably in something STEM-related or something else concrete that can end up making them money in the real world.
And then they end up paying it back.
They don't tend to do gender studies, I imagine.
I would have to check, I suppose, but if I was going to put my money on it, I would bet that intersectionality is a bourgeois subject.
This is absolutely magical.
Today's kids, after all, are facing a world in which wages have been flat for a decade.
Jobs are increasingly insecure, and homeownership is basically off the table.
Most of their parents may not have had university educations, but they did have access to decent jobs and secure housing, and at least some sense that if they worked hard, they could have nice things.
There are many reasons for that.
All of which this author and the people who read him and the, let's just call them Corbynites, are all opposed to.
They're all in favour of the things that make what their parents had impossible for them to have.
Because they're fucking stupid.
They're against any kind of economic protectionism.
Not that I'm really in favour of that, but they're against any kind of like national investment.
They're pro-open borders.
They're pro-globalism.
They're pro-EU.
These people are against the things that made it possible for their parents to have what they had.
And then he says, that link between effort and reward has been broken for some time, yet successive governments have ignored the fact.
Instead, they've loaded deaths onto the younger generation on an increasingly questionable assumption that wages will one day rise fast enough and they'll be able to pay it.
It'll never happen with your policies.
Wages will never happen with the policies you want.
And if they do, it won't be in a way you want.
We'll get to the what's happening this week in Venezuela segment later.
And focus their efforts on protecting the privileges of the old on the rational yet short-sighted assumption that they vote and the kids don't.
Okay, but what does that have to do with anything?
Nothing.
Scrapping tuition fees won't fix any of this, of course.
Then why the fuck did you bring it up?
It's all narrative, isn't it?
It's just all narrative.
Indeed, if we knew how to fix this, the world would be a much kinder place.
Don't worry about making the world a kinder place.
Worry about making it a more prosperous place.
Nonetheless, it means that answering enthusiasm for it with talk about tinkering with interest rates or opportunity costs is the wrong response.
Yeah, because you're not talking about the feelings.
Fuck your feelings.
I want to talk about the data.
The data is what matters.
It's a sort of category error, a wonkish answer to an emotional question.
At least you can admit it!
Fuck your feelings!
I'm sick of the politics of feelings.
They have absolutely no bearing on reality other than your subjective emotional reaction.
And I don't know you, and I probably don't really like you, so fuck your emotional reaction.
It's not my problem.
It's your problem.
Don't bring it to me and say, hey, I'm having an emotional reaction.
I'll be like, well, I'm sorry, that's just none of my business.
Maybe scrapping tuition fees really isn't progressive.
It'll cost billions.
Oh, that's progressive.
And there are probably better things that we could do with the money.
Fine.
But maybe that's not really what the enthusiasm is about.
No, it's about lunacy.
How Jeremy Corbyn has played the politics of feelings and made it so that literally the facts don't matter.
Maybe, just once, people want to see politicians do something that might help the young and the poor rather than the old and the rich.
Imagine that.
That is the fucking stupidest thing I've ever heard.
You have sat there and refuted the idea that any of this is helping anyone.
This is not going to help the young and the poor.
As you said, in Scotland, when you have free higher education, less people use it for some reason.
And I don't even know what that is, but the facts are the facts.
You have refuted that in your own argument.
The idea that you can then just sit there and go, well, I might, this will help the young and the poor rather than the old and rich.
No, it's not.
It's not going to help fucking anyone.
And you know it.
It's going to cost billions.
It's not going to do anything good.
And the worst part about all of this is, record numbers of students are being accepted into universities under the system that we have in England.
532,000 people in the UK entered higher education in 2015, which was an increase of 16,000 people on the year before.
And I'm sure that if I were to find 2016s and when we get 2017s, they'll probably be increasing as well.
What is wrong with the system?
Everyone's getting educated.
People who want education are getting it.
Shut up with your stupid, radical, left-wing bullshit.
It doesn't work.
And since we're on the subject of things that are stupid and don't work, here's Nick Clegg.
The door is open to a Brexit deal on freedom of movement.
Yeah, but why?
Why?
Just why, Nick?
Why do you want this?
At the heart of Westminster, there lurks a secret.
Both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn want to thwart the moderates in their party who are opposed to a hard Brexit.
I'm going to do a video about this next week because, as far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a soft Brexit.
It's either hard Brexit or no Brexit.
And that's coming from Barnier.
But anyway, I'll talk about that another time.
Both have alighted on the same alibi.
They claim that we cannot change the rules governing freedom of movement and stay in the single market.
Then we have no choice but to leave the single market altogether.
Well, that's the rule set by the EU.
That's Merkel, Juncker.
They're the ones saying that.
It's not like anyone else.
It's the people who set the rules who are saying this.
And their reason, as far as I can tell, is ideological.
They just say, well, we just don't think it'll work.
It's okay.
Why?
It's never explained.
They never explain why they will never compromise on freedom of movement.
And the thing is, they have with other countries.
They just don't want to do it with us.
And I think it's about control.
But anyway, it sounds neat and democratic.
That's because it is.
He says, after all, few would disagree that immigration in general, and EU free movement in particular, played a significant role in the EU referendum last year.
That's because it did.
No one's disagreeing with that, Nick.
EU leaders regularly emphasize the importance of the four freedoms.
And so the logic flows effortlessly.
The will of the British people must be obeyed.
EU freedom of movement must go and single market membership must be rescinded.
Yeah.
Yeah, it does.
There's no getting around it, Nick.
But I mean, what's the problem with that?
Why are you so obsessed with freedom of movement?
What is this obsession?
Why do people have to come here in your mind?
I mean, you don't think they have a right to come here, do you?
I mean, that would be insane, wouldn't it?
You understand that nobody in the world has a right to come to this country.
And if we let people in, that's a privilege.
And we can rescind that privilege at any time for any reason because it's our choice as a sovereign nation.
And it's one of the things that makes us a sovereign nation.
And there's nothing wrong with that, Nick.
I'm sure you fully understand that.
But anyway, let's carry on.
This argument is self-serving nonsense.
That was a bold thing for the ex-leader of the Liberal Democrats to say.
The leaderships of the two main UK parties, united by Euroscepticism, if little else, are willfully misrepresenting the rules governing free movement within the EU.
They claim that it is an unchanging EU principle.
No, that's not what we claim.
That's what Merkel is claiming.
That's what Juncker is claiming.
That's what, I don't know, whoever Goebbels or whoever else is in bloody top of the EU is claiming.
Barnier, that's what they're saying.
That's not us.
Go talk to Barnier.
Go talk to Verhofstadt.
See if they're prepared to compromise on it.
I bet they won't.
I bet they will just tell you flat, no, we're not going to do that.
And at the end of the day, okay, then we leave.
What happens?
We trade under World Trade Organization tariffs, which is 2.5%, if I recall correctly.
Not the end of the world.
Everyone else has to do it.
They claim that the rest of the bloc will not bend to British demands for change.
They already have.
Have they?
It's interesting how much leverage we have over them, isn't it?
All that running around chicken-littling it as the sky's falling.
Turns out that Britain's actually in a better position than you gave us credit for.
Only when it suits your argument, though.
Let's go back to the self-serving bit, shall we?
If only Mrs. May and Mr. Corbyn showed a little more ingenuity, the scope for a breakthrough in the Brexit talks would open up, one in which the UK could remain in the single market, but also secure important changes to freedom of movement.
Why do you want to remain in the single market?
Why?
Why can't we just have trade deals with them?
We'll just get free trade deals.
I mean, if you listen to someone who's actually in the EU Parliament, like Daniel Hannan, he actually just said, he was very clear.
He was saying, well, look, everyone's acting like we're going to get a trade deal because there's too much money at stake to not get a trade deal.
So let's just do that.
I mean, obviously, Barnier and Merkel and the rest, when they are talking in public and they're sizing up for the negotiations, they are of course going to say, well, no, we're very strong, we're very tough, we're going to be playing hardball exactly the same way David Davis is doing.
And he's doing a great job of playing hardball.
But at the end of the day, when it comes down to it, and they sat down around the table, they're both going to go, yeah, okay, well, fine.
They're going to do it.
You know they're going to do it.
And if they don't do it, that's fine because it's going to hurt them more than it's going to hurt us.
And again, don't take my word for it.
This is the Hungarian Foreign Minister's opinion of it.
Let's have a look at what he has to say.
Scenario, to be very honest.
If there's no deal, if there's no comprehensive economic trade and investment agreement, then we will be in a big trouble in Europe, because the last time we were able to implement a free trade agreement was in 2011, a free trade agreement with Korea.
So the problem is that the EU is very slow on free trade agreements.
And if you get free hands, I mean, if Britain gets free hands, then you will be able to sign free trade agreements with India, with Turkey, with the U.S., with Australia, with which we do not have.
I mean, European Union does not have free trade agreements.
So if this is the case, then it will harm our competitiveness, harm the competitiveness of Europeans furthermore.
So that's why we are pushing for a fair, I don't like this categorization of soft and hard.
Do you understand?
I like fair Brexit.
Do you understand the categorization?
I don't.
Okay, that's why I don't like it, because I don't understand.
That's a common point, definitely.
So we want fair Brexit, that's for sure.
Balanced, fair Brexit, which will end up in mutual benefits and mutual positive outcome.
But we want the most comprehensive economic, trade and investment partnership with the UK in the future.
But I think that we are on the right track.
So we are ready.
I mean, I hope European institutions are ready to negotiate in a, let's say, constructive manner.
Because what we don't want is the following.
That you look back to the time of your referendum.
Then some of the reactions on behalf of European institutions were like, as those persons took it as a personal insult, what you have decided.
And we don't want any European institutions to sit at the negotiating table as a group of insulted persons.
And we don't want the European negotiators or EU negotiators to play for revenge.
I think that's enough.
And I think it's quite obvious that James O'Brien there isn't enjoying the information he's receiving, given that he's a doommonger about Brexit, and he always has been from the start.
But I guess a moral argument doesn't work when you're talking about numbers, James.
Anyway, and again, of course, and of course, when Trump's like, well, a UK-US trade deal is going to happen quickly, that doesn't bode well for the EU either, does it?
That's exactly what he's talking about.
The UK is much quicker and it's much more agile, and it always will be.
We have the advantage over Europe, and they know it.
So going back to what Clegg was saying, I don't even know why he's wedded to this.
And I don't know why he's trying to put us in a position where we are just powerless to do anything, because we're not powerless to do anything.
And when you have low demand and low scarcity, you have low value.
I'm just going to skip to the end of this because he just won't shut up.
There is an obvious solution.
With goodwill and a little imagination, EU governments could agree on an emergency break on the free movement of EU citizens, allowing governments to impose quotas and work permits in response to unusually high levels of EU immigration.
Why?
Why don't we just leave?
I don't really want the government having more control than they already have.
They're fine.
It's fine.
We'll just leave and get a trade deal with them and we'll get the trade deal because we all need the trade deal.
We come out the best there and the EU can go hang.
It's still not too late to pull back from the hard Brexit cliff edge.
The circle of single market participation in reform-free movement can be squared.
I don't think it's going to happen, Nick.
I don't think that's going to happen.
I think you're wishful thinking.
I think you are deluding yourself.
But I think a lot of the political class deludes themselves a lot of the time.
So don't worry about it.
And since we're on the subject of the EU, this was a really interesting thing to happen.
Jean-Claude Juncker on MTEU Parliament.
You are ridiculous.
Alright, Mr. Juncker, I guess we'll see what the Emperor with no clothes has to say.
There have been fireworks in the European Parliament after EU Commission Chief Jean-Claude Juncker branded the Assembly ridiculous.
The outburst came after only a few dozen MEPs turned up to a debate.
But the Parliament's president Antonio Saani reacted furiously, accusing Juncker of a lack of respect.
The European Parliament is ridiculous, very ridiculous.
I welcome those who have gone through the effort of coming to the chamber, but the fact that only about 30 MEPs are attending this debate is enough to show that the pressure rebuking Juncker Taini said, I'm asking you to use different wording, Mr. President.
We are not ridiculous.
Please, you can criticise the Parliament, but the Commission does not control the Parliament.
It's the Parliament that controls the Commission.
Immediately after the SPAT, Juncker vowed never again to attend a meeting of its kind.
The session had been held to discuss Malta's six-month EU presidency, which ended last week.
Oh dear.
Oh dear.
Are you actually an angry, powerless man?
I'm pretty sure that if Merkel had turned up, a lot more people would be there.
This segues us nicely into the G20 protests.
Now, I haven't actually looked into what happened at the G20.
I don't know what the results of that were yet, because I've had a busy weekend and it's only just happened.
But we knew in advance that the militant left were planning the biggest black block of all time at G20, claims the Hamburg interior minister.
Very interesting.
You would have thought that they would have, I don't know, made preparations for that.
but apparently they didn't and I'm, but apparently they didn't.
Because journalists Timpole and Luke Radowski and Lauren Southern were there and were attacked by Antifar members.
And I saw them in London yesterday.
And they told me that there simply were not enough police.
They had been trying to get more and more police in from across the area, but they just didn't have the numbers to deal with it.
You fucking knew.
You knew that this is what they were going to do.
You knew and you didn't do anything.
You didn't have something planned in advance.
Why not?
Why are the radical left being given such a pass?
They are clearly terrorists.
They are using intimidation, violence, and fear to try an exact political change.
That is what terrorism is.
And this is why the American state of New Jersey has actually registered them as a domestic terrorist organization.
Because that's what they are.
So naturally, the anti-capitalist protesters with homemade weapons converged on Hamburg ahead of the G20 summit.
It's been reported that there were around 8,000 of them expected.
And Tim, Lauren, and Luke all said that there were probably around 5,000 to 6,000.
But that's still colossal.
And I actually couldn't find the video that Tim had sent me where it was just a huge marching column.
It was an army.
Or it would have been an army had a heap of building materials been a house.
It was a disorderly mob.
But it was actually really quite terrifying to watch.
And this is something that they're very happy with.
This encourages them.
This will incentivize people who are on the margins and maybe not quite brave enough to do it to join in next time because of the weak response from the authorities and the fact that there was so much destruction and looting that went on and that they were so successful.
This will just embolden them.
These people need to be stopped.
They are dangerous.
And I can't believe that you can't see this.
But I mean, let's have a look at some of the footage.
But at night, hundreds of militants scuffled with German police again, following two days of vandalism and violent clashes.
The mayhem began on Thursday night on the eve of the summit.
Friday saw far-left activists burning cars and looting supermarkets.
Police responded with water cannons and tear gas.
Hundreds of people were injured, including police officers.
Brilliant.
Anyone not thinking this is a problem?
I mean, is there anyone who's like, okay, yeah, okay, the street's on fire.
They're smashing in things, they're beating people, they're stealing, they're looting, they're throwing off fireworks.
There's smoke everywhere, you can hardly see anything.
This is okay.
It's alright, don't worry about that.
It's fine.
This is what a democracy looks like.
I wonder how many of these people are college students, university students?
I bet a huge proportion of them are.
I think there are a fair few number of professors in there too.
This is what we get for sending so many of them to the university.
Maybe if they were the industrial workers, they wouldn't be doing this and they'd actually be getting ahead in life.
Maybe if they had jobs, maybe we should just put them to work.
This is quite incredible, just them loosing stores and just stealing stuff.
Just, I guess they're redistributing it to the people.
It's only someone's stuff.
It's only their livelihood that's being ruined here.
Don't worry about it.
Probably part of the bourgeoisie, you know?
The people who work here and who own this.
Yeah, this is helping the proletariat, you see.
To give you an example of how dangerous these people are, this is an undercover cop being attacked.
and look at how he saves himself.
Yeah.
He has to fire a warning shot to get him to fuck off.
And at least Merkel has condemned it.
I mean, so many other leaders just aren't talking about it.
But the thing is, this is clearly on the upswing.
This needs to be dealt with.
The ideological motivations for this need to be addressed.
People have to explain to these idiot kids that socialism doesn't work.
They need to be able to explain why it doesn't work.
They need to be able to give good reasons, good solutions.
You need to be able to address their arguments on their own terms.
But I can tell you there's simply nowhere where socialism has made the lives of the working class more prosperous.
Just name a place.
Name somewhere that has made the working class prosperous under socialism.
You can't do it!
It just doesn't exist.
It doesn't make them more prosperous.
And meanwhile, in socialist Venezuela, government supporters attack Venezuelan Congress and injure opposition lawmakers.
Of course they do.
Venezuela is on the brink of a civil war, and this came after last week where some rogue government agent dropped a hand grenade on one of the buildings.
So Venezuelan lawmakers who oppose Nicolas Maduro were beaten and bloodied in the Hall of Congress Wednesday.
Ask yourself a question, and be honest, do you think that Momentum wouldn't do this to Jeremy Corbyn's opposition if they could have the opportunity?
Do you think they wouldn't do this?
Because I think they'd fucking do it.
They spent enough time bricking the windows and smashing the cars of his opposition's own party.
So to do it to the Conservatives, they're doing a heartbeat.
Apparently, the pro-government mob stormed the building, facing little or no resistance from security guards.
Why?
The attack left 15 people injured, according to opposition leaders, including one lawmaker who was rushed to hospital with broken ribs and a head wound.
Scenes of the Mali were shared on social media, showed masked pro-Maduro assailants.
Oh, masked assailants, eh?
Wonder where we've seen those before.
Kicking and punching lawmakers in the chambers of Congress and outside in the streets.
Reports inside the building were also attacked and robbed their equipment.
Oh my god, where have we seen that before?
The assault appear to mark a dangerous new escalation of violence against the opponents of the leftist government, although this was not the first time lawmakers have been bloodied by pro-Maduro gangs known as collectivos.
These people have to be stopped.
They are dangerous.
And they're going to ruin us like they've ruined Venezuela.
There's no argument against it as far as I can see.
Not once.
I mean, I spend a lot of time engaging with socialists as well.
They just don't have the arguments and they know it, which is why they have to resort to tactics like this.
But thankfully, tactics like this show them for what they truly are.
Tyrannical bullies who've got no compunction with dealing violence to their political enemies.
No respect for democracy.
No respect for property, obviously.
No respect for your rights in general.
▲
Export Selection