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July 16, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
25:26
This Week in Stupid (16⧸07⧸2017)
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Hey everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 16th of July 2017.
I've decided to kind of keep this face cam setup where I've got the thing on the screen because people seem to be okay with it and a lot of people like the fact that they can see my expressions and I think it does help when I'm taking the piss out of something.
But also because I actually really prefer recording then editing, whereas the other way around I have to edit then record.
Because by the time I come to record, basically I'm tired and I don't feel like I'm giving my best.
Whereas when I'm doing this first, I feel like I am.
So hopefully it's not too awful and let's talk about some things.
So this is probably my favourite story of the week.
Long after protests, students shunned the University of Missouri.
Imagine my shock.
In the fall of 2015, a grassy quadrangle at the center of the University of Missouri became known nationwide as the command center of an escalating protest.
Yes, because we needed some muscle over here.
Students complaining of an official inaction in the face of racial bigotry.
Students complaining of official inaction in the face of racial bigotry.
Joined forces with graduate students on hunger strike.
Within weeks, with the aid of the football team, they'd forced the university system president and campus chancellor to resign.
Yeah.
I mean, it's not like Missouri University is like wildly racist by anyone else's metric, only by the metric of intersectional social justice warriors.
And when they join together and they feel they are legitimately aggrieved, which I don't think they are, then this can happen.
And this is something we've seen time and time and time and again.
But anyway, it was a moment of triumph for the protesting students, but it's been a disaster for the university.
What a fucking surprise.
Freshman enrollment at the Columbia campus, the system's flagship, has fallen by more than 35% in the two years since.
The university administration acknowledges that the main reason is a backlash from the events of 2015, as the campus has been shunned by students and families put off by, depending on their viewpoint, a culture of racism or one where protesters run amok.
Yes, I imagine the culture of racism at Missouri University is certainly something that's putting off many people, particularly the white ones.
Because let's be honest, the racism is really going mostly one way.
Before I read the next paragraph, you can see what I'm talking about, can't you?
Sign up for the race/slash-related newsletter.
Why the fuck do you have a race newsletter, New York Times?
Why is that a thing you do?
Join a deep and provocative exploration of race with a diverse group of New York Times journalists.
God, I think I'd rather cut my own nuts off.
What possible use is that to anyone?
What does it do?
How does it help someone?
All it does is further engender a racial divide by ramming it deeper into their heads that race is an important factor in their lives.
And it's not.
Your race is fucking worthless to me.
I just don't care.
And I can't imagine thinking, ooh, a racial newsletter.
I'll sign up for that.
Unless I was a member of Black Lives Matter of the Ku Klux Klan.
Anyway, before the protest, the university fondly known as Mizzou was experiencing steady growth in building new dormitories.
Now with the budget cuts due to lost tuition and a decline in state funding, the university is temporarily closing seven dormitories and cutting more than 400 positions, including those of some non-tenured faculty members, through layoffs and by leaving open jobs unfilled.
This is what you get when you let social justice run your fucking university.
When these people start breaking the rules, you have to come down on them like a ton of bricks, because otherwise other people will see that and think, well Christ, the university admin are just letting that happen.
I don't want to go to university like that.
Why the hell would I?
I'm going to university to be educated, not to become an activist.
As Jordan Peterson says, we should just defund every single one of these activist courses.
If they don't have intellectual educational value, they should be defunded.
Let people go and join a little church of Scientology or Church of Social Justice, as and when the case may be, because privately, you can do whatever the fuck you want, but this is using public money, and they're fucking it up.
Few areas have been spared.
The library is even begging for books.
I guess it makes a difference from burning them, really.
The general consensus is because of the aftermath of what happened in November 2015, said Mun Choi, the new system president, referring to the climax of the demonstrations, which we covered extensively on this channel.
There were students from both in-state and out-of-state who just did not apply, or those who did apply, but decided not to attend.
Now, the interesting bit about this is the spin the New York Times puts on this.
Who do you think they interviewed to get the impressions of in this regard?
Is it someone relatively politically neutral who doesn't really know anything about this and was just like, oh god, I'm not really interested in that.
Or was it someone with a racial agenda?
But before that, students of all races have shunned Missouri.
I love the way they have to divide this up by race.
But the drop in freshman enrollment last fall was strikingly higher among blacks at 42% than among whites at 21%.
A racial breakdown is not available for this fall's class.
Black students were already a minority and made just 10% of the freshman class in 2012.
And that proportion fell to 6% last fall.
So even if the social justice goal of getting more black people into university is, if they are being honest about that, they're failing.
Their methods just don't work.
Their methods are in fact to dissuade other black people from coming to this university.
That's, that is the silver bullet right there.
Even if this is, even if we all agree what we want is increased minority representation, you fail.
You can't achieve that.
Actually, what you do is decrease minority representation.
So if you're listening to this and your goal is that, then this is not the way to do it.
You need to find another way.
My advice would be to specifically say, look, we don't emphasize race.
We actually don't care about what race you are.
What we care about is your academic achievement, your personal commitment, and all this sort of thing.
Things that people can use to be empowered by.
Things that actually require strength of character and personality and something that someone has to put effort into rather than just being black.
But like I said, imagine who they, uh, imagine who they interviewed.
Whitney Matewe, a black student from Kinney, Texas, who will be a senior in the fall, said that after the protests, her parents asked her if she wanted to transfer, but she decided to stay because she's in Missouri's prestigious journalism school.
But she said, she understands why black students may not want to apply to a campus where they're all but invisible.
Well, they're far less visible now thanks to your social justice friends.
A friend's boyfriend obliviously told her that she looked like Aunt Jemima.
Really?
And she's dismayed that her friend did not object.
Being the other in every classroom and every situation is exhausting, she said.
Well, maybe if you didn't divide yourselves by race, you wouldn't be the other.
I mean, like, in the circles in which I travel, there are lots of non-white people, and we don't refer to them as non-white people until social justice warriors come along and say, hey, let's talk about your minorities.
And it's like, well, they're people, you idiot.
You know, they're actually people with personalities and they don't really just want to be categorized based on their race, as I understand it.
But hey, maybe, I'm just a cis white man.
What would I know?
And unsurprisingly, by sheer numbers, the drop in white students has caused the greatest damage, since they make up the majority of those people on campus.
Tyler Morris, a white student from St. Louis, said that he was afraid of being stereotyped as a bigot if he went to Missouri.
This is what the social justice activists are doing to your university.
Why are you letting them do this?
He decided to go somewhere else.
He said, the discrimination wasn't against white people, but I didn't want to be that person who I guess was stereotyped because I was white.
It's all this is.
All this is, like, when they say about, like, whiteness and blackness, they're just stereotypes.
You're letting a bunch of racial bigots run around with a bunch of out-of-date stereotypes, and you're letting them ruin your university.
You should stop this.
Defund these courses.
College Council has said that Missouri might have a hard time recovering from the protests because its reputation was largely regional.
Oh, not anymore.
Now its reputation is international.
And like with Brett Weinstein at Evergreen State, this is going to have far-reaching repercussions, way beyond your little regional universities.
People know.
And this is the thing, right?
We all know, we all know that this is because of a kind of cult behavior that has arisen from these social justice courses.
In fact, here's an article from this week about someone who was part of the intersectional social justice movement who thinks that they've just been excommunicated from the Church of Social Justice.
Because it really, really looks like a religion.
You're going to love this.
They're finally catching up to where we were about a year and a half ago.
There's a particularly aggressive strand of social justice activism weaving in and out of my Seattle community that has troubled me, silenced my loved ones, and turned away potential allies.
Is there?
Oh, do go on.
I believe in justice.
I believe in liberation.
I believe it's our duty to obliterate white supremacy, anti-blackness, cis-heteropatriarchy, ableism, capitalism, and imperialism.
Well, I don't think it's your duty to do that.
In fact, I mean, I don't even know why you included all of those other terms when you included the word white supremacy at the beginning.
That's what you mean when you say white supremacy.
Which is why they can all say, well, okay, Obama might have been black, but he was the president of white supremacy.
Okay, well, then white supremacy is pretty fucking diverse, isn't it?
It doesn't actually exclude non-white people.
Because what you're talking about is just Western liberal democracies.
That's what you mean when you say white supremacy.
And we know it.
And I also believe that there should be openness around the tactics we use and ways our commitments are manifested over time.
Beliefs and actions are often conflated with each other, yet questioning the latter should not renege the former.
Well, it's called the progressive tack theory doctrine.
If you're not exactly as cultish as you could be, you're out of the cult.
As a cultural studies scholar, breaking new ground here, I'm sure.
I'm interested in the ways that culture does the work of power.
What then is the culture of activism?
And in what ways are the activists restrained by it?
Or compelled by it?
To be clear, I'm only one person who's trying to figure things out.
I'm open to revisions and learning.
But as someone who has spent the last decade recovering from a forced conversion to evangelical Christianity, I'm seeing a disturbing parallel between religion and activism in the presence of dogma.
Sorry to do this, folks.
I'll have to turn my fan on because it's just too fucking hot here and I can't leave my window open because of the cars driving by and they're really loud.
So, sorry.
Anyway, seeking purity.
This is amazing, isn't it?
Yes, yes, we know all about this, but let's go over it.
There is an underlining current of fear in my activist communities.
That's because they're totalitarian and oppressive.
That's why.
It's separate from the daily fear of police brutality, which isn't really a daily fear.
Eviction, discrimination, and street harassment, which again, I don't even believe you really have these as fears.
I don't believe you.
What I think has happened is it happened one time to you, like, you know, years ago now.
And what you've done is you've bounced it between each other in your little activist communities, your little echo chambers, to the point where now you're convinced that it's happening all the time everywhere.
Despite if you look out the road at the street, nothing's happening.
It's just crickets.
Every now and again it happens, but you're convinced it happens constantly.
It is the fear of appearing impure.
Social death follows when being labeled a bad activist or simply problematic enough times.
Yeah, imagine what happens when you get labelled racist when you're not.
I imagine a social death then occurs as well, doesn't it?
I've had countless hushed conversations with friends about this anxiety, about how it has led us to refrain from participation in activist events, conversations and spaces because we feel inadequately radical.
Don't you think it's a problem?
I actually don't prefer to call myself an activist because I don't fit the traditional mold of a public figure marching in the streets and interrupting business as usual.
When I was a Christian, all I could think about was being good, showing goodness, and proving to my parents and my spiritual leaders that I was on the right path to God.
All the while, I believed I would never be good enough, and so I had to strain for the rest of my life towards an impossible destination of perfection.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's exactly the problem that all of these cult-like groups have.
What are you doing?
You know, and this is something that always cracks me up when someone talks about the skeptic community.
Oh, look at this person, he's not a real skeptic.
Oh, we're not going down that same path.
I don't give a shit what you consider to be a real skeptic.
I don't consider what you don't give a shit what you consider to be a real liberal.
I don't give a shit about purity tests.
I give a shit about what's actually happening.
A purity test is just a way of establishing power over someone else on the in-group.
It's a way of climbing the hierarchy until you are at the top as the most pure and the most respectable according to your dogma.
Fuck your dogma, fuck your respectability, fuck your purity tests.
I'm not taking part in any of them.
I feel compelled to do the same things as an activist a decade later.
I self-police what I say in activist spaces.
I think, uh, what was the name?
Arthur Chu.
He called it mind-killing, didn't he?
He mind-kills himself on a regular basis.
Same thing.
I stopped commenting on social media with questions or pushback on leftist opinions for fear of being called out.
Oh, that's right.
Don't push back on the absolute crazy for fear of being bullied by your fellow activists.
Let the crazy run amok.
Nothing could go wrong.
I'm always ready to apologise for anything I do that a community member deems wrong, oppressive, or inappropriate.
Yet you shouldn't allow people to have that power over you.
Don't allow them to be able to chastise you over nothing.
The amount of energy I spend demonstrating purity in order to stay in the good graces of fast-moving activist community is enormous.
Yeah, it looks like a lot of work.
I would never do it.
Activists are some of the judgiest people I've ever met, myself included.
Yes, to a religious degree.
There's so much wrongdoing in the world that we work to expose, and yet grace and forgiveness are hard to come by in these circles, because there isn't any.
At times, I found myself performing activism more than doing activism.
I'm exhausted, and I'm not even doing the real work I'm committed to do.
It is a terrible thing to be afraid of my own community members, and though they are probably just as afraid of me.
This is a cult.
To be in fear of not towing the line and being cast out of the in-group is a classic cult mentality.
Ultimately, the quest for political purity is a treacherous distraction for well-intentioned activists.
Yeah, you're damn right it is.
Number two is reproducing colonialist logics, which I'm not even going to get into because I think that it's all horseshit.
Three, preaching and punishments.
Telling people what to do and how to live out their lives is endemic to dogmatic religion and activism.
That's true.
And what is proselytization if not a form of activism for religion?
I mean, you are proselytizing social justice everywhere you go, all the time.
There is no functional difference between what you believe and how you believe it, and how you perform it.
It's not that my comrades are the bosses of me, yes, they are, but the dogmatic activism creates an environment that encourages people to tell other people what to do, making them the bosses of you.
This is and the like I said, it's the hierarchy.
If they tell you what to do, then they have the whip hand over you.
And if they can tell lots of people what to do, then they're the ones in charge.
As long as they adhere strictly and dogmatically to the rules, they can never lose their position and they can have power over everyone.
You have to be careful of this shit.
This is especially prominent on Facebook.
Scrolling through my newsfeed sometimes feels like sliding into a pew to be blasted by fragmented, frenzied sermon.
Imagine, no.
I know that much of the media posted there means discipline me to be a better activist and community member.
Better Christian.
But then, when dictates aren't followed, the common procedure of punishment ensues.
Punishment for saying, doing, believing the wrong thing, including shaming, scolding, calling out, isolating, or eviscerating someone's social standing.
Told ya.
Discipline and punishment have been used throughout all of history to control and destroy people.
Why is it being used in movements meant to liberate all of us?
Think we're about to reach a moment of self-awareness?
I think it's almost like you can feel it.
It's pushing up society.
But if we're meant to be liberated, why are they controlling us?
Oh, shit!
This isn't a liberation movement at all!
We have all made serious mistakes and hurt other people, intentionally or not.
We get a chance to learn from them when those around us respond with kindness and patience.
When does that happen in social justice?
Where is our humility when examining the mistakes of others?
Why do we position ourselves as morally superior to the unwoke?
Who of us came into the world fully awake?
Just to call yourselves woke is scary.
I mean, I use it completely ironically because it's hilarious.
Because when you say I'm woke, that means I'm part of the cult.
That's what that means.
That means I have adopted a completely radically different frame and worldview, and now anyone outside of that worldview is a heretic, a kafar, an infidel.
And everyone must be judged.
Us most of all.
Sacred texts, number four.
There are also some publications of dogmatic activism that could be considered sacred texts.
For example, the intersectional site Everyday Feminism receives millions of views a month, and it's now begging for handouts because they can't afford to sustain themselves.
Tells you a lot about this activist community, doesn't it?
It features more than 40 talented writers who pen essays on a wide range of anti-oppression topics.
You mean utter crazy nonsense that goes completely unregulated by people outside of the cult.
Zeroing in ones that haven't yet broached larger activist conversations online.
When everyday feminism articles are shared amongst my friends, and these articles are shared very widely.
I mean, for me, they seem like absolute basic bitch feminism.
And I would never touch.
don't do videos on everyday feminism because it's just stupidity.
It's just, it's so far out there.
It's like Tumblr level bullshit.
But maybe I should, because apparently they're being well-received in the communities.
But anyway, I feel both grateful that the conversation is sparking and also very belittled.
Nearly all of their articles follow a standard structure.
An instructive title, a list of problematic or suggested behaviours, do as we say, and a final statement of hard opinion.
Hard opinion.
Just opinion.
The titles, the educational tone, and the prescriptive checklist contribute to creating the idea that there is only one way to think about and to do activism.
Yes, that author's way.
Because then you'll be their follower.
And it's a swiftly moving target that is always just out of reach.
In trying to liberate readers from the legitimately oppressive structures, I worry that sites like Everyday Feminism are replacing them with an equally restrictive, orthodoxy at the other end of the political spectrum.
Yes!
Yes, that's exactly what's happening.
Yes, well done.
I'm thrilled that you can finally make it.
They end with a rather long paragraph that I'll only go through part of.
I want to spend less time antagonizing and more time crafting alternative futures where we don't have to fight each other for resources and care.
For an introvert like me, it may look like shifting my activism towards small-scale projects and recognizing personal relationships as locations of mutual transformation.
Yes, this is what Jordan Peterson's saying when he's saying tidy your room.
If you tidy and maintain the space around you, including your personal relationships, obviously, then you will actually be contributing to the positive change in the world that you want to see.
And the more people who do this, the more positive change will exist in the world.
And before you know it, the world around you will be as you want it to be.
It will be less oppressive.
And you won't even have had to call anyone out on social media to do it.
And I really do think that it's the highly oppressive nature of social justice that has led to Generation Z being nothing like millennials.
A political science professor in Pennsylvania says Democrats need to worry, because the generation replacing their millennial allies on college campuses has a distinct libertarian streak.
Wow.
Really, if you have highly, highly oppressive social structures from what are basically your older siblings, and you don't particularly like being controlled, which who does, let's be fair, no shit you're going to develop a libertarian streak.
But hey, that plays great to us in the sort of left-wing, liberal, or even right-wing libertarian movements.
That's good for us.
You have created our new generation of activists who want essentially the same things as us, and they don't want to be controlled by social justice warriors.
Well done, you have crafted your own demise.
Jeff Brower, a professor at Keystone College, has been gathering data on Generation Z and recently told the New York Post that he expects the rising generation of college students to differ markedly from those currently dominating campus culture.
Good.
Maybe these ones will actually be half decent.
Politically, Generation Z is liberal, moderate with social issues, like support for marriage equality and civil rights, but moderate-conservative with fiscal and security issues.
While many are not connected to the two major parties and lean independent, Generation Z's inclinations generally fit moderate Republicans.
So I think what he's saying here is that there is definitely a space for a sort of centrist party to bring the best elements of the centre-right and the centre-left together and actually appeal to these people.
So if you're that kind of person, you're watching this now and you're thinking, maybe I will go into politics.
That's a good start.
That's your base.
That's your demographic.
They're the people who are going to be legitimately interested and invested in what you have to present, as long as it's not highly oppressive and rigidly controlling.
And why would it be?
If you're listening to this video, you're probably not that kind of person.
He says, pollsters need to pay attention to Generation Z. People and politicians need to recognize that they aren't millennials and shouldn't be lumped in.
There's virtually no attention paid to this demographic.
The Democratic candidates lost 5% of the youth vote nationally, down from 60% to 55%.
In Florida, Democrats' margin of victory among the young dropped 16 percentage points.
In both Ohio and Pennsylvania, the drop was 19 points.
In Wisconsin, 20 points.
Brower believes that this is indicative of more than a one-time phenomenon, saying it is much more likely that the precipitous drops were due to a more conservative Generation Z being able for the first time to express their political inclinations, especially in the economically hard-hit swing states.
You're fucked, social justice.
This is, these are the people that will eventually kill you.
You will be regarded the way I regard the evangelical Christians.
You're just like, oh god, not all these shrieking race-obsessed harpies again.
They will drive you out of the temple like the race-based money changers that you are.
And good.
Good riddance to you.
And the thing is, if you're a political YouTuber, you should be trying to talk to these people.
I don't know how you can reach them.
But definitely try and talk to these people and say, hey, look, there are actually a large number of marginalized people from the mainstream political conversation who are really on your side on these issues.
We understand what these people have been like towards you.
Can you even imagine being a young kid growing up and among these sorts of social justice warriors?
The sort of cult-like oppressive mentality that wants to segregate everyone by race, gender, and sexuality and thinking, I just don't want this.
You know, I don't want to be told that I was born wrong, you know, as a kid and a teenager.
Why would anyone want that?
So it's so awful.
They say these findings could give Republicans hope for capturing a large share of the youth vote in future elections, but Brower cautions that while Generation Z will likely be more conservative than millennials, which literally anyone is going to be more conservative than millennials, these people could basically be Noam Chonsky acolytes and they'd be more conservative than millennials.
They will not actively seek out the GOP unless the party takes steps to conform with their more moderate social views, and could be driven away by a significant rightward lurch.
Yeah, I don't think these people are going to like the GOP at all.
This is why I think that it might actually be a good time for people in the centre who agree with some centre-left policies and some centre-right policies, most likely centre-left policies on social issues and centre-right policies on economic and security issues, to actually start finding an identity and a brand that they can give to people, they can present.
This is what they should be doing at this moment, I think.
This generation is different, but they're about to have a profound impact on commerce, politics, and trends.
If politicians and business leaders aren't paying attention yet, they better because they're about to change the world.
Now, remember, these are the people that PewDiePie is speaking to right now.
Right now.
When he made his video the other day, bitching out the wage gap and calling out feminism, these people are affected by that.
And don't forget, there was a poll done where about two millennials, uh, two Generation Z. What did you know?
YouTube was known and cool.
The Wall Street Journal was known and uncool.
And this is the generation that we're talking about, I think.
So basically start thinking about how to appeal to them.
Because we're going to need them if we want to prevent a significant rightward lurch to more identity politics, more authoritarian, controlling, race-based bullshit.
You know, the alt-right and the SJWs are just a mirror image of each other.
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