Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - This Week in Stupid (23⧸07⧸2017)

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July 23, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

25:36

This Week in Stupid (23⧸07⧸2017)

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	Hey everyone and welcome to this week in Stupid for the 23rd of July 2017.
	It's so weird having the face cam but I actually like it because I feel like I'm talking to someone rather than just like projecting onto the internet.
	So you guys remember Yvette Falaka, don't you?
	The uh the cult leader?
	Oh no no sorry she's not the cult leader, but she's definitely one of the high-ranking hatchet women of BAM by any means necessary.
	You might remember her from this clip.
	I'm just here in protest!
	Fuck off my speech!
	Please!
	Get back!
	Right, well, that was Yvette Falarka initiating that assault, and she's been arrested and charged.
	Which I think is a fantastic thing because she seems like a violent lunatic.
	It's just to the benefit of everyone around her that she's like 5 foot 1.
	A Berkeley teacher has been arrested for her role in the confrontation between neo-Nazis and counter-protesters at the capital last June.
	I'm just going to assume they're neo-Nazis because I don't know anything about these people.
	Yvonne Falaka, no, I think it's Yvette Falaka, was arrested on Tuesday night on charges of assault by means of force likely to inflict great bodily injury, participating in a riot and inciting a riot, which she did.
	Falaka, a member of the activist group By Any Means Necessary, attended Sunday's protest against white supremacists, gathering outside the California State Capitol building and gave television interviews after the clash.
	The thing is, is the very name itself not a dead giveaway that this person is probably an unhinged lunatic?
	I mean, if you're going to call your group, your radical left-wing activist group, by any means necessary, kind of makes everyone think automatically that violence is well within the purview of what your group is capable of.
	And so when you turn out to be a violent psycho and start attacking people on the street, it's just, it's hard to say that this wasn't expected.
	So from their group, four people were arrested, and two people were arrested from an opposing counter-group called the Traditionalist Worker Party.
	I haven't looked into them, I can't tell you anything about them, but I'm sure they're Nazis.
	You may remember that Yvette Falaka was a middle school teacher protesting at Berkeley, but there were many other people from Berkeley involved, including Eric Clanton.
	He's one of the chaps who hit the guy on the head with the bike lock, who has also been arrested.
	And it seems that the academics as a class are realising, well, hang on, the public are actually starting to pay attention to what we say and do.
	Which is why on the Chronicle of Higher Education there was this article.
	If there's an organized outrage machine, we need an organized response.
	Do you not think it might be worth listening to why people are annoyed?
	I mean, rather than setting yourself up as another faction, another class, against the internet, why not actually engage with them?
	The professors who have engaged with the internet have done really well for themselves, because the public is crying out for populist intellectuals who will actually listen to their concerns, take them seriously, and try and figure out what's wrong and what can be done.
	This is why Jordan Peterson gets $50,000 a month or something like that on Patreon.
	It's because he's actually helping people.
	He's actually working for others, whereas you people appear to be working for nobody but yourselves, your prestige and your bourgeois careers.
	And we'll get to the bourgeois careers bit in a minute, because it's quite funny how unbelievably out of touch the middle class is with everyone else in society.
	I mean, in general, this is across all levels of society.
	There is a huge class divide between the working class and the middle class.
	And it should really make you wonder why an aristocrat like Jacob Rees-Mogg, you know, he's a millionaire, he's unbelievably posh.
	He's eaten educated, and he's not ashamed of it.
	You should wonder to yourself how a man like that can end up with a populist grassroots campaign of support.
	Why?
	I can tell you exactly why, but I'll do it in another video another time.
	Anticipating the possibility of an internet mob harassing a professor because of something he or she said can seem a bit like prepping for a lightning bolt.
	Yes, people get struck by lightning, but more often than not, it feels like a freak occurrence.
	It's easily avoided, some might say, by not flying a kite in a thunderstorm.
	But these strikes appear to have grown more common in recent months.
	I love that the way they're just passing this off.
	Anything a professor says is completely legitimate, because they're a professor.
	And so, sure, when a professor who calls for the hanging of Donald Trump should expect blowback, he shouldn't expect too much.
	I mean, what do you want?
	A massive mob of people online who are really pissed off?
	Why would that happen?
	Why would that happen?
	Oh, it's because you're psychotic.
	Professors should not be calling for the hanging of anyone.
	They're treated with respect in society and they should use that position of privilege that they have earned with a bit of deference, with a bit of responsibility, because they are influential people.
	But it's hard to argue the same for, say, a professor who writes a lengthy essay on classical statues and how they have been co-opted by the modern white nationalist movement.
	Oh, I haven't read that yet.
	I think I probably will do a video on that for my alternate channel because that sounds like a really interesting read.
	Classical statues have been co-opted by white nationalists, have they?
	Are we going to have to go around smashing them all now because they're Nazis?
	Sorry, Augustus.
	Fuck you, Trajan.
	What are we going to do?
	Are you going to turn into ISIS?
	Start destroying those things that are beta, are you?
	This is pagan.
	This is polytheist.
	You're a hypocrite for having this.
	We must smash it.
	These attacks also come at a time when a majority of Republican or right-wing Americans harbor a negative view of the nation's higher education institutions.
	Why do you think that is?
	Do you think it's something to do with them being something like 85% Democrat voting?
	Do you not think that's an incredible amount of bias?
	And do you think they're pumping out any kind of, I don't know, far-left ideologues who think that anyone right of Noam Chomsky is a Nazi?
	Is that anything to do with why Republicans might generally have a really negative view of America's universities?
	I mean, like, it's not just Republicans.
	The centre-left also has a really negative view of the higher education institutions.
	Thank God STEM is still broadly intact.
	Although I have seen inroads, feminist biologists, claim in geneticists, people who claim they're geneticists, who say that there aren't biological sex isn't real.
	And obviously there are millions of genders, despite all evidence to the contrary.
	Some professors argue that it's no longer a matter of if the internet mob comes to the door, but when.
	Maybe, maybe, if you weren't tweeting out things like, I like white genocide, maybe we should hang Donald Trump, the internet hate mob would leave you alone.
	There wouldn't be an internet mob banging at your door because you wouldn't have offended loads and loads of people.
	And if you're going to turn around and tell me, well, I don't care about offense, I'm like, hey, great, I'm with you on that one.
	But you did care about offense when we were talking about black people.
	You did care about offense when we were talking about women.
	You did care about offense when we were talking about trans, gay, whatever.
	So don't tell me you don't care about offense.
	What you're saying to me is that you are simply part of a team and you don't care about the opposition team, which I'm not surprised about.
	But you remember that they are supposed to be your fellow citizens and you are countrymen and you are a nation and you are a democracy.
	You've got to live with each other.
	So maybe you should talk yourselves down from the position of the other side as evil and think, right, okay, how can we do a dialogue with them?
	How can we actually get things done with these people?
	But hey, I'm just a guy with a webcam on the internet, so why would you listen to me?
	I mean, you guys all know best, don't you?
	The greatest thing our profession can learn is that things have changed.
	Do you think that you're, I mean, you are talking in class terms there.
	You're talking, well, professors as a class have to understand that the profession has changed.
	It's like, okay, but you're not a monolith, are you?
	There are lots of professors who engage with the internet and do very well engaging with the internet, bringing their skills and knowledge to YouTube and to other platforms and other places on Twitter or minds on Facebook.
	They do great.
	Because the public likes hearing from people who know what they talk about.
	They enjoy operating a knowledge economy.
	You can be part of that if you weren't such elitists.
	This is coming from Tressie Macmillan Cotton, an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, who recently wrote an essay describing the methods of dealing with online outrage.
	I'll have to read through that one too.
	If there's an organised outrage machine, we need an organized response.
	Oh, that's a good idea, isn't it?
	That's a really good idea.
	Why don't the academics just band together and form a faction and pit themselves against the general public?
	That's not going to end bavi or anything, is it?
	I mean, you're not going to be seen as out-of-touch elitists looking to do damage to the common man, which is, by the way, how you're already viewed, just so you know.
	Anti-male, anti-white, anti-straight, anti-American.
	That's how people look at you.
	And that's only because you are all of these things, because of your distinctly warped ideology.
	This is why Plato's Republic is one of the most scary systems you can even vaguely imagine.
	If these people were running the country, imagine the sort of tyrannical, genocidal policies they'd end up putting out.
	Unbelievably dangerous.
	And these people should really try to understand that they are not actually separate from the general public.
	It is the general public that sends their children to these universities.
	And if you have any interest in maintaining your position at these universities, maybe you should remember that the general public is your audience.
	Or you might end up like Mizu.
	35% down.
	How much more do they have to cut before the rest of the professors realize they aren't independent of the society that supports them?
	But by the time they're writing about you on a website or publishing your address or something, it's probably too late.
	Well, just to be specific, don't dox people, don't harass people.
	It doesn't help.
	It just makes them organise like this.
	And the thing is, right, new people do not make it any easier on yourselves because you don't have to find yourself as an adversary to the internet.
	You really don't.
	But what you have to do is engage with them before it gets to the point where they are just furious with you.
	That's all you need to do.
	Just talk to them, assuage their fears and say, okay, well look, I'm open to your interpretation on this and I'm willing to listen if you're willing to listen to mine and you could actually have a dialogue with the people who are now clogging up your Twitter feed calling you a dirty communist.
	But I'm just saying, did McCarthy do anything wrong?
	In her essay, Miss Cotton offers a variety of tips for academics to help handle an internet pillorying, including asking the IT department to set up a separate email account or creating an email template for responding to outside inquiries for comment.
	And while an individual's opinions might be limited, other professors offer pointers on how to support a colleague under fire.
	Maybe you should actually address what they've said.
	Maybe you should accept maybe some criticism is warranted in this case or whatever case.
	But you just assume this is all unjust.
	You just assume you were in the right and the internet is in the wrong.
	Because they're a group of filthy peasants and you'd never be caught dealing with any of those people.
	So she says that it's natural to pull away from a professor and broaden the controversy, but that might be the least productive course.
	And you know, I actually totally agree.
	I think that a group of you should get together and make public statements and then engage with prominent people on the other side as to why what you are saying is correct.
	Because maybe you can persuade them.
	Maybe you can actually engage with them and change minds.
	Instead of saying nothing, college should reach out to those at the center of the media maelstroms, Cotton suggested, even if you don't agree with their statements.
	Solidarity, she said, doesn't mean agreeing with everything someone else said.
	Right, okay, that's a problem, isn't it?
	Because maybe if you disagree with what they said, you should be the one criticizing them already.
	It should probably never have got to this point.
	You should probably have addressed their nonsense before it came to the point where they were saying in public, and now there's a giant public backlash.
	Saying to them, look, I'm on your side just because I'm a professor, is a statement of class solidarity.
	And it means that the people on the other side say, well, they're all in the same boat together.
	Therefore, they're all just as bad.
	So when we get rid of one, we may as well get rid of them all.
	Do you want them to have that opinion?
	Do you want them to go on campaigns of defunding to ruin your entire universities?
	Or do you want to just get rid of the problem professors?
	And as for the professors who might be receiving hundreds of mails, Miss Cottom said that sometimes the kindest thing to do is write an email that opens with, there's no need to respond to this.
	You're looking to get yourselves shut down, aren't you?
	That's what it is.
	You've got to the point where you can't stand the white guilt anymore.
	You can't stand the fact that you're white, probably male, probably living in a wealthy Western country, and frankly, you just want to be ruined.
	That's what you want, isn't it?
	Don't be stupid.
	have to respond otherwise people are gonna keep they're gonna know you You know, do you understand?
	There are hundreds of thousands of activists who are really pissed off with the way things are going.
	And they want, and I mean, that's just from our sphere.
	There are going to be millions in the Republican sphere.
	But they want you to be stopped.
	They don't like what you're doing.
	They view what you're doing as ruining their country.
	And honestly, I have a really hard time telling them that you're not.
	You know, I think you're doing that as well.
	Because it looks like you're trying to ruin your own country.
	And it looks like you're trying to do it out of a misplaced sense of guilt.
	Well, I'm sorry things happened in the past that weren't very nice.
	I'm really sorry.
	But we can't change that.
	And we're not doing those things now.
	So shut up.
	George Siccarello Ma is an associate professor of politics and global studies at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
	His comments about race...
	Oh!
	Oh, they were just random comments about race, were they?
	Just comments about race.
	We're not going to go into it.
	We're not going to go into the fact that he was advocating for a white genocide or anything.
	Are we?
	I mean, he was literally advocating for genocide.
	Oh, it's just a joke.
	It's just a joke when a professor tweets out that all he wants for Christmas is white genocide.
	That's not a deliberately inflammatory statement or anything.
	If he's trolling, that's fine.
	That's fine.
	He can just come out and say it.
	He can just come out and say, ah, don't worry, I'm just teasing you guys.
	You know, and he can make other jokes about genocide.
	What about a joke about a black genocide?
	Or a trans genocide?
	Come on.
	What's stopping you?
	It's just jokes, George.
	They're just jokes.
	Go on, make one.
	Go on.
	You fucking liar.
	He says, you get to the point where you know it's not your fault.
	No, it is your fault.
	It's entirely your fault, George.
	It's 100% your fault.
	And if I tweeted out about black genocide and a bunch of black supremacist activists, Black Lives Matter activists got on my case going, there is a black genocide, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	I wouldn't be like, well, this is someone else's fault.
	Like, you would have to be a moron to think that.
	And was it George Orwell who said there are some things so stupid only an intellectual could have thought of them?
	I think it was that.
	I think it was Orwell.
	And you are definitely one of those people, Mr. Ma.
	You know that you're in the right, and yet you feel sort of surrounded.
	You were in the right calling for a white genocide, were you, George?
	Is that the case?
	Do you think you need to commit suicide, or is it that you're not white now because you're a Jew?
	You feel as though you're being pummeled and barraged.
	And especially for people who aren't used to this, this is a very frightening and dangerous phenomenon.
	Maybe you shouldn't publicly call for genocide from your position of power as a professor.
	I mean, hey, I know this is a radical solution to the professors getting insulted on the internet gap, but maybe, just maybe, this is your fault.
	While many other people might offer their support of solidarity behind the scenes, Mr. Sikora Lamar said, very few do publicly.
	What?
	What?
	Are you telling me that very few people nailed their banners to the mast of white genocide?
	I can't believe it, George.
	I can hardly believe it.
	I No fucking shit, Sherlock.
	Some academics have started trying to prep for what they see as inevitable.
	Why is it inevitable?
	Why can't you just not be a total bigot?
	Is there any reason why you have to generalise and stereotype people?
	Is there any reason why you have to call for genocides?
	Is there any reason why you have to condemn the present because of the past?
	Even though these things are two different countries?
	Why do you have to do that?
	I mean, isn't it just really bizarre and anachronistic to apply modern moral standards to past moral conditions?
	So Patricia Matthew, an associate professor at English at Montclair State College in New Jersey, has said that she started a reading list of best practices for professors and administrators in dealing with digital disarray.
	Her list includes toolkits on academic freedom from the American Association of University, blah, blah, blah.
	She says, I thought, no, we have to educate people in power, and I think colleagues who want to be allies but don't know what to do.
	That's it.
	People in power are using their position of privilege to call for things like white genocide.
	But just, it was just a joke.
	It's just a joke.
	It's not genuinely a position he holds or anything.
	It's never actually about what the person said.
	Okay.
	It's so easy to think, well, if they'd only said it in this way, or if they'd not use that term, then this wouldn't have happened.
	But that's not true.
	Every time an administration participates in this, they're emboldening groups of people to keep at it.
	Well, what is it then?
	If it's not about what they said, if people weren't actually annoyed that, for example, Sikorillo Ma said, all I want for Christmas is white genocide, whereas Jordan Peterson said, you know what you need to do, clean your room, why are people pissed off at Sikorillo Mar and they love Peterson if it's not about what they say?
	What is it about?
	What is it about if it's not about that?
	I mean, it appears to be an expression of your ideology, and your ideology seems to be intersectional post-modernist social justice, and Jordan Peterson's ideology appears to be not crazy.
	So, you know, it's up to you to determine what it is so you can tell us, but from our impression of it, it doesn't look good for you.
	And it doesn't look good for us if we were to believe what you believe, because that would put us at the bottom rung of a caste system.
	And I don't know whether I need to tell you this, but most people, even conservatives, would consider themselves some variant of liberal.
	And we don't really like caste systems and aristocracies.
	That's one of the things that, I mean, that was one of the purposes of liberalism.
	I don't need to tell you, but for anyone listening, that was one of the driving purposes of liberalism was to abolish the aristocracy.
	And I don't think instituting a new caste system is exactly something that liberals are going to agree with.
	So maybe, just maybe, you should take your progressive stack and shove it up your fucking asses.
	But this is the bit that annoys me the most, I think.
	In cases when an instructor comes under fire, his or her administration's response can be crucial.
	Recriminations or suspensions could signal to outside aggressors, not the public now, outside aggressors, now it's an enemy army, that the strategy is working, some academics say.
	What?
	Don't you think you should be held accountable for the things you say from your positions of power?
	Do you think that, in fact, the academy itself should act as a fortress?
	It should, you know, pull up the drawbridge, get archers on the walls, and just start firing back at anyone who happens to be outside.
	The barbarians at the gates.
	Because that's how this comes across to me.
	Already this year, several university administrations have criticised instructors who have come under fire for the things they said, and sometimes punish them too.
	Yeah, well, maybe they did something wrong.
	Maybe they should be punished.
	Yvette Falaka, do you think she shouldn't be punished?
	Not that she was a professor, but, you know, was it Eric Clanton?
	Do you not think he should have been punished?
	Do you think that it was just okay for him to assault someone with a bike lock?
	At least two digital skirmishes this year has led to the temporary closure of campuses.
	Evergreen State College and Trinity College, which affects not only faculty but student staffs in the local community.
	Yeah, maybe you should be more responsible then.
	Maybe you shouldn't be cooking up ideologies that are broadly attacking white people or men or straight people or whoever.
	Maybe you shouldn't be trying to rescind the moral franchise from certain segments of the population and extend it only to a particularly diverse new aristocracy.
	Maybe if that wasn't obvious that that's what you were doing, people wouldn't be pissed.
	But the thing is, you have to remember, most of these universities get public funding.
	Fuck you!
	Why do you deserve everyone's money for you to go and take a giant shit on them?
	You can cook up whatever kind of sophistry you like, but that doesn't mean they have to endure it.
	But what's worse is your attitude.
	Your attitude is what has to change.
	Your attitude to the general public, your innate sense of superiority, has to change.
	Because just because these people didn't go to Drexel Community College, or whatever it is, wherever it is, doesn't mean they're not intelligent people.
	It doesn't mean they're not educated in other realms.
	But you've got this incredibly elitist attitude, and it comes from being cloistered away in your ivory towers, and you've got to drop it.
	Got a really great article here.
	It's not from this week, it's from the week before, but it really highlights the sort of thing we're talking about.
	Because I'm sure you remember from the last video I did on Mizzou, where we found that the number of black enrolments to Missouri University had halved almost.
	It had gone from 10% to 6%.
	And it'll be things like this that are why.
	This is the kind of public relations that these students and professors are creating for your universities.
	And I can see why this would dissuade black people.
	So they talk about what happened, obviously, that we covered last time.
	And they say, I'm sure the protests have brought about positive change and more open discussion about race on campus.
	Seems like the sort of thing you need less discussion of and more focus on the people on campus rather than their race.
	But anyway, more dialogue, more diverse hiring practices.
	Yeah, this is going great.
	Individual efforts to reach out to our students and engage that has sparked national efforts like Mizzou Syllabus, hashtag.
	But the university's actual rebuttal addressed none of this and in fact didn't directly mention racial black students.
	This is shameful.
	I don't think they were trying to ostracize any more of them, to be honest.
	I don't think they're trying to separate them as a discrete group from the white students on campus.
	You fucking segregationists.
	Until the university can stop seeing these issues as damage control and begin this as a conversation as an opportunity, no real change is going to be possible.
	We can still get there, but first, there are three core truths that we need to all face head-on.
	You mean three pillars of faith that if are not true, the entire faith goes down.
	The University of Missouri was and is a tough place for black students.
	That is some fucking amazing PR.
	Come to Mizzou.
	It's really tough for black people.
	Don't worry about being Latino either.
	Sorry, Latinx.
	It's not easy for them either.
	But University of Missouri.
	It's really tough for black students.
	I don't know why they didn't use that as a slogan.
	I mean, you think they'd accept the reality of race at Missouri, wouldn't you?
	During my seven years as a professor and news director at local NPR affiliate, each semester we welcomed an army of new hyper-ambitious and accomplished students from diverse backgrounds.
	It's just propaganda, isn't it?
	The way they talk is always propaganda.
	So when the concerned student protests broke out, I reached out to black students, alumni and friends and asked them about their experiences.
	Excuse me, excuse me.
	What's it like being a black person?
	That's so weird.
	It's so fucking weird.
	Their answers surprised me.
	If you talk with black Missourians, you may see that we may be in a sort of OJ verdict moment here in the state.
	It's possible that the way you see the 2015 protest depends on your race.
	Or depends more on your ideology, I think.
	This gap that we need to bridge may be the most important thing for us to do.
	I think the most important thing for you to do is stop talking about race.
	That's it.
	Just Morgan Freeman, this bitch.
	Just be like, you know what?
	It's not really a useful conversation, is it?
	The only people on the other side of the conversation are the race realists, and let's be honest, we don't want to address their data.
	So it's a bit weird that you would bring up the subject all the time when the liberals are just like, well, I don't care whether they're black or white or Mexican or Latinx or whatever.
	You know, no one cares.
	It doesn't matter.
	Concerned Student 1950 was part of a historic tradition of black freedom movements and civil rights efforts that have helped form the foundations of freedom in our country.
	Missouri students took a stand and we can be proud of that stand.
	You're not fighting anything.
	You are now fighting against yourselves.
	Against the fact that you have eaten up and conquered every foe in your path and there is literally nothing holding you back now, which is why you have so many black students at universities.
	In fact, you have universities that have whole black areas of campus that have specific black only areas and retreats to talk about their blackness.
	You have affirmative action for all colours of the rainbow apart from white.
	You are literally not being oppressed.
	You are now taking a stand against your own success because you have to be a victim.
	If you're not a victim, none of this is justified.
	And I don't think you're victims, so you know what my position on what you're doing is.
	Our concerned students have provided us with the impetus to act together and make things better.
	Yeah, well, they've also started crippling your university.
	And I bet the faculty are thinking, well, shit, we're actually going to have to get rid of these people because otherwise, looking at the books, we're going to end up closing.
	I mean, do you think Mizzou is going to start growing or shrinking if it gets more or less social justice-y?
	If you project the banner that Mizzou has a massive problem with race, do you think it's going to encourage people of any stripe to come to your university?

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