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Aug. 20, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
28:32
This Week in Stupid (20⧸08⧸2017)
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Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 20th of August 2017.
Before I start, I just want to say a big thanks to everyone who emailed Mythicist Milwaukee in support of me.
You can stop emailing them now because they have not deplatformed me and the conference will go ahead as scheduled.
Thank you all so much.
I really appreciate it.
The one thing I don't appreciate is iconoclasm.
I absolutely loathe it, as we saw plenty of this week.
This annoys the hell out of me.
So with the toppling of this Confederate statue, what has been the net reduction of racism in the United States?
Is the answer zero?
I think it might be.
I don't think this has had any noticeable effect on the amount of racism in your country.
So why did you do this?
All you have done here is mimic ISIS and every other cultural movement in history that wants to remove the inferior past from existence because it didn't adhere to its current ideological whim.
And the thing is, this is nothing new.
This happens all throughout history.
You can go all the way back to, say, Arkhan Arten.
When he implemented the first monotheistic religion, he went around all the temples, well not him personally, but he had all the temples defaced and all of the other gods removed.
And then when he was overthrown, he was removed from all of the statues and monuments.
His name was scrubbed from as many of them as possible.
Because this is a statement of cultural hegemony.
The Christians did the same in the Roman Empire.
When Christianity was ascendant, they went around all of the pagan statues and carved crosses in their faces as they smashed them down.
This is an ideological revolution taking place and we don't have to let it happen.
And I hate to say that Donald Trump was right, but he was absolutely correct when he said that this was a slippery slope and it wouldn't simply stop at slave-owning Confederates.
Pastor urges men to remove George Washington's statue and rename the park over slavery.
Fucking why?
Do you think that park is going to make people think, you know what, maybe slavery wasn't so bad?
I love this quote from Trump.
You really have to ask yourself, where does it stop?
It doesn't.
They have to all go.
Because they were not part of the current ideological zeitgeist.
They come from a morally inferior history that everyone has.
Everyone has a morally inferior history.
And I'll explain to you why.
Moral innovation is like technological innovation.
It has been progressing throughout human history.
There was a time in history, way back in the midst of history, where slavery didn't exist.
And do you know what happened?
After a conquest?
That's right, all of the people were simply killed.
Slavery itself was actually a moral innovation.
Not a very good one, not a very advanced one, rather cruel in some ways, but it was probably better than just being butchered.
To judge the past by the morals of the present and to find those people morally inferior is like saying that medieval knights were bad at war because they didn't have guns.
It's fucking stupid.
And anyone, every single person who even thinks that they can justify this is a fucking moron.
Were you born in the same time and place as these people, you would think the same things.
These were societal norms.
This is not actually something that we can really morally judge them by any more than we can judge the past for being technologically inferior.
Everyone who is participating in this is a fucking fool.
And as I said, the iconoclasm simply doesn't stop until every single statue that is not part of the party or ideological orthodoxy has been removed.
This is a statue of a man who died in 1991.
And it was defaced with a black power message.
Oh well.
Guess he must have been a slave owner then.
Speaking of slave owners, some absolute cocksucker decided to vandalize a statue of Abraham Lincoln.
Because apparently they skipped history class.
What a fucking moron you'd have to be to think that was an appropriate thing.
I mean, even if you're an anti-racist, like, Abraham Lincoln is an important figure on the road to being anti-racist.
You know, this is actually mind-blowing to me.
But of course, locals take to social media to call him racist because, again, he just wasn't born in our era.
And so he couldn't partake in our moral standards.
And so Abraham Lincoln can get fucked, can't he?
And of course, you had progressive outlets like Vice.
Let's blow up Mount Rushmore.
Let's blow up Vice headquarters.
How about that?
Which one is more pleasing to the eye?
Which one does more good for humanity?
But of course, after the inevitable backlash, they decide to change it.
Let's just get rid of it.
No, Wilbert L. Cooper.
Go and get fucked.
Donald Trump says removing Confederate statues is a slippery slope that will get out of control.
Maybe he's right, but would that be such a bad thing?
Yes.
Yes, it would be a bad thing.
Shut up and fuck off.
More than ever, old monuments to famous white American men, the worst kind of American men, are being threatened in the name of progress.
How is tearing down monuments progress?
What are we progressing to?
Seems to be a future in which we deny the past because we didn't agree with it.
But it's okay, you fucking morons.
We don't live there.
The past is some foreign country you've not been to and you never will.
Fact is, I'm not sure there's any American president worthy of being etched into the side of a 60-foot mountain with explosives and jackhammers.
I mean, every single one has at least been partially complicit in horrific atrocities.
That's fucking life.
All of human history, there have been atrocities, wars, deaths, disease.
It's been terrible.
It's been fucking terrible.
And we have finally come to a place in which we don't actually lionize those things.
And now you're like, well, you know what we should do?
We should tear down everything on the journey here.
No.
These things are the collective cultural memory of our civilizations.
And a reminder of why we don't do these things now.
They should stay.
And if your ideology can't stand them being there, that's your fucking problem.
I love at the end of this article.
With the president of the United States basically justifying neo-Nazism?
No, he didn't.
No, he fucking didn't.
He condemned them in explicit terms and he also condemned the alt-left, which I think is a perfectly good name because you guys seem to hate being called the alt-left.
And the more you hate it, the more I'm going to call you alt-left.
So get used to it, you fucks.
And I also like this.
Editor's note, the headline and URL of this story have been updated.
We do not condone violence in any shape or form, and the use of blow-up in the original headline as a rhetorical device was misguided and insensitive.
Yeah, shut up.
Honestly, I am absolutely sick of people just tearing down monuments.
I hate this kind of shit.
The monuments are an expression of your cultural history.
They are the steps by which you took to come to the place you are at now.
And the place you're at now is a hell of a lot better than the place you were at, say, 300 years ago, 200 years ago.
And it's important to remember why you ended up here and not somewhere else.
Loads of places are tearing these statues down and there's absolutely no need for it.
I don't see the need for this at all unless you want to placate hard left ideologues and I don't.
So fuck these people.
And you know what?
Good.
I'm glad that there are people putting these monuments back up.
They didn't just stand for racism and slavery.
They also stood for other things.
But more importantly, they are part of your history.
You can't erase this.
Even if you tear down all of these monuments, that won't change anything.
All it will do is make people look at you like you think you are taking over.
Like you deserve to be the ones tearing everything down, which you don't.
You've not earned this.
Just because you think you have the moral justification, I'm here to tell you you don't.
You are not morally justified in anything you do.
In fact, you are the immoral people who are so, so afraid of their own place in the world that they can't stand to see something that disagrees with them.
If you can't bear to see these things up, that's your problem.
That's not anyone else's problem, that's your problem.
You're the dysfunctional one here, not everyone else.
What's that?
This has encouraged other people to tear down statues as well?
Statues of people they don't like, like Vladimir Lenin?
Well, I've got to say I'm not really a big fan of that either.
I mean, it's not like he did anything to Seattle, so I don't see the point.
But unsurprisingly, the communists are like, oh, please don't tear down the Lenin statue.
I mean, this is the Russian Communist Party that's complaining about this, so it's not least, at least communists that live in the United States.
But still, it's just, there's no need for this.
There's absolutely no need for this.
And unsurprisingly, we have to talk about Antifar again, because these are the people behind the removal of the statues, and defacing the statues and the militant protests that have been leaving people blood-eaten, injured, and bruised and thousands and thousands of dollars of smashed property all across the United States for the past year, year and a half.
But suddenly, oh, now the neo-Nazis are doing something.
Oh, oh, well, Antifar, are they really so bad?
The answer is yes.
Yes, they are.
Antifar are the ones getting the neo-Nazis out in the streets.
So yes, they are the reason that this is a problem, and they are so fucking bad.
What exactly is Antifar?
The social causes of Antifar, short for anti-fascist or anti-fascist action, are easily identifiable as left-leaning.
Oh, you fucking think.
They're communists or some strain of.
Just call them commies.
Or the alt-left.
Most members oppose all forms of racism and sexism.
And things that aren't racism and sexism, but they choose to define that way because they're insane.
And strongly oppose what they see as the nationalist, anti-immigration, and anti-Muslim policies that Mr. Trump has enacted.
Right, okay, so they're middle-class, bourgeois white kids who hate Donald Trump, probably hate their parents, and certainly hate the working class.
Got it.
As their name indicates, Antifar focuses more on fighting far-right ideology than encouraging pro-left policy.
Bullshit.
Bull fucking shit.
The problem is that you don't know who these people are because they cover up their faces and for some reason you will give a platform to violent anonymous criminals.
You won't find out who they are and you don't know what they do.
And I am telling you, these people spend their entire time on social media and the internet highly encouraging pro-left policy.
And when I say pro-left, I'm not talking about center-left social democrats or something.
I'm talking about far-left communism.
I hate to keep retreading old ground, but I feel like if I don't keep saying this, the media is going to whitewash it and people won't realize what a danger these people are.
Unlike the mainstream left, they do not seek to gain power through traditional channels, winning elections and passing bills into law.
Is that all we're going to say, is it?
It's not that they're calling for violent insurrection and revolution.
I mean, that's, we'll just leave that out, BBC.
Don't worry about that bit.
That less important, right?
Less important.
Antifar is anti-government and anti-capitalist.
Yes, they're fucking communists.
Just call them what they are.
And their methodologies are often perceived as more closely aligned with anarchists than the mainstream left.
Imagine my fucking shock.
Antifar does not shy away from militant protest methods.
You mean they're violent.
Why don't you just say that?
Including the destruction of property and sometimes physical violence.
Why are you saying this as if it's just a neutral thing?
This is just, we have observed this behavior of this species of animal in the wild.
We're not going to put a moral judgment on it though.
I mean, we would if we were talking about Nazis, but we're not going to talk about communists for some reason.
I wonder if it's anything to do with a number of socialists working at the BBC who have communist sympathies.
They were present at the 2017 Berkeley protests of far-right speaker Milo Yiannopoulos.
I don't even think he's far right, but anyway.
And violent protests against Donald Trump's inauguration.
They're also present at Charlottesville.
So, thank you, BBC, for actually saying something truthful and accurate for once.
They have been instigating this, and they have a long history of instigating this.
Much like the far-right, anti-Far's members around the world comprise a patchwork of groups, and though most appear to be active based in the US and UK under the name Anti-Fascist Action and Germany, which is obviously in German, the movement was founded in 1932 to provide a militant far-left group to the counter the fast-rising Nazi party.
Well, that's kind of true, but I think we should provide a little more context.
I'm going to read to you from a book, if you don't mind, to explain why this is a problem.
So before the Nazis rose to power, there's a group in Weimar, Germany called the Spartacists.
These were communists.
There was a Spartacist uprising in 1919.
I'll leave a Wikipedia link in the description in the sources so you can read this for yourself.
Because I don't want you to just take my word for any of this, right?
They ended up fighting with people called the Free Corps.
These people were right-leaning nationalists, veterans of World War I, and people who Hitler ended up recruiting to make the majority of his brown shirts.
These people fought in the streets before the Nazis were even a blip on the radar.
By the mid-20s, all leading political parties were equipped with their own private armies, either officially or by informal alliance.
This was true not only of the communists and nationalists, but also of the Social Democrats, who created a uniformed socialist army, the Reichsbanner, consisting of over 3 million workers.
Hitler did not intend to be left out.
In 1921, he began to organize his own army, recruiting its members largely from unemployed former Free Corps fighters.
The result was the brown-shirted Sturm...
I can't pronounce that.
The stormtroopers.
By 1925, a special Nazi elite corps was added with the black-shirted SS.
Okay, these people are always present before the rise of the fascists.
They were in Weimar, Germany.
They are now.
We need to stop them.
They do even mention that there is a petition with nearly 100,000 supporters on change.org calling for Donald Trump to declare anti-Faro domestic terror organization.
But honestly, I think we can do better.
Someone created a petition on the White House website, petitions.whitehouse.gov.
I haven't signed it myself, obviously, because I'm not an American, but if you are an American, I'll leave a link to this in the description.
They need another 48,000 signatures.
And when they get that, the White House must respond, even if they don't necessarily do what's asked.
But at least they have to acknowledge the problem.
I recommend you do this.
I recommend you pause this video right now and go down and actually sign this petition because these people are terrorists by the definition as specified here.
Terrorism is defined as the use of violence and intimidation in pursuit of police claims.
Couldn't be clearer.
Absolutely crystal clear.
Anti-Far have started this.
They are absolutely in the wrong and they absolutely need to be stopped.
Just look at this headline from CNN.
Unmasking the leftist anti-far movement, which they don't unmask at all.
You know, they would if these guys were far right and they were covering their faces.
They absolutely would.
But they don't because they're far left.
Activists seek peace through violence.
Paging Mr. Orwell.
Fucking hell.
Who wrote that headline?
What absolute lunatic wrote that and thought, yeah, that makes sense.
That doesn't make them sound like crazy people.
It doesn't make us seem like communist sympathizers or anything.
But needless to say, CNN decided to change that headline after people pointed out, hey, CNN, get fucked.
But let's have a watch of some of this video because this is just amazing.
It's 6am in Portland, Oregon, and we're headed to a bar with blacked out windows.
They wanted to meet us really early in the morning because they're concerned about a lot of people being around.
We are meeting members of the Rose City Antifa, short for anti-fascist.
This group's main goal is to disrupt neo-Nazis and white supremacists, but also take on government and capitalism.
Why don't you just call them communists?
Just call them communists.
Call them what they fucking are.
FIFA is any group that's willing to stand up against fascists by any means.
Bollocks.
Bollocks is it.
Otherwise, you'd have the constitutionalists.
You'd be calling them anti-far as well.
They're not.
You know that antifar are specifically ideological.
This is absolute horseshit.
I can't believe that this CNN will just publish this.
To stand up against fascists by any means necessary.
By any means necessary.
By any means necessary.
Gotta love it.
Gotta love it.
It's a term I've been hearing around a lot recently from left-wing activists.
They've been saying the term by any means necessary a lot.
And that's not even in reference to BAM, the actual terror group that have actual got are actually organizers for Antifar.
But I mean, maybe it is.
Maybe there's a connection there that I'm just not aware of.
But as far as I can tell, they're not.
They say, can mean outing a white nationalist at their work.
But you're not going to do it for the communists.
You are interviewing right now.
You're fine with this.
Oh, yeah, yeah, look, these neo-Nazis are everywhere.
But don't worry about the commies.
Yeah, like, what did communism ever do?
It's just an economic thing.
Or to their neighbors.
Or, as we've seen recently, violence, fires, property damage, hand-to-hand combat at protests across the country.
Explain to me the reasoning behind fighting.
You have to make it so unpalatable to be doing white supremacist organizing that they no longer want to do that.
Yeah, that works.
That makes them not do it.
You understand the organizing comes before the demonstrations, right?
They've already organized by the time they're on the fucking streets, you stupid little shits.
You are fucking idiots.
And this scene, oh, explain to me the violence.
It's because they're psychotic.
It's because they have an enemy that they think it is righteous to murder.
That's what it is.
These people are lunatics and you shouldn't be giving them the time of day.
If anything, you should be reporting these people to the police.
Historically, that's what's worked.
You have to...
No, it didn't.
No, it didn't fucking work.
Tell me where that's fucking worked.
That has never fucking worked.
As far as I'm aware, certainly didn't work in Germany.
You fucking moron.
Your body in the way and you have to make it speak in the language that they understand.
It's the language you understand.
It's the only language you understand, apparently.
sometimes that is violence what about people who will say that is what about people who say hey i'm not a nazi Don't hit me in the head with a bike lock.
But that person's probably a Nazi because you're the one who decides who the Nazis are, aren't you?
Their right to free speech, even if it's hateful.
Oh, fuck their right to free speech.
Just fuck it.
What good is that to them?
They don't want, they, you don't understand.
These people are on a crusade.
They think it is righteous to kill the infidel.
The infidel doesn't have rights and free speech.
The infidel needs to die.
But we do think the communities have the right to step in and say, no, this is not acceptable.
They don't.
They absolutely don't.
No, fuck your communities.
Fuck.
Fuck you guys.
You don't have the right to tell people they can't speak.
You don't have the right to suppress them.
And that's what you're doing.
You are actively oppressing these people when you attack them.
You don't have the right to do that.
I don't even know why you think you have the right to do that because you don't believe in rights.
So there's an element of distrust of the government here, right?
An element maybe of anarchism.
People in our group come from across the left spectrum.
We have people that are anarchists.
We have people that are socialists.
We even have people that are like liberals or social democrats.
I fucking doubt it.
Show me the liberals.
Show me them.
Liberals get the bullet too, you cunts.
One of the principles is that you're not going to wait for the government to act.
We don't rely on the cops of the courts to do the work for us.
Because you don't believe in justice or order.
Because you're anarchists.
Unsurprisingly.
There's no firm number on how many antifa activists there are in the US because there isn't any one organization.
Most are local groups that recruit and communicate through social media.
But experts who track these organizations say their membership is growing in response to the rise of white national groups and the election of President Donald Trump.
Oh, oh, growing in response to the white nationalists.
It's not that these people were on the streets protesting before the white nationalists were, except that they were.
And it's not like these people attacking white nationalists isn't actually giving the white nationalists some kind of actual victim status, which it is.
You know, these are the people who need to be stopped.
The white nationalists will be no problem when these people have been stopped.
Violence and property destruction led to more than 200 arrests in Washington, D.C. on Inauguration Day.
Prosecutors say they were wearing masks covered head to toe in black, a tactic the antifa call black block.
I wonder if ISIS call it black block.
People dress in black block for a few things.
One.
Scott Crowe has been leading anarchists and militant leftist groups for decades.
So people put on the masks so that we can all become anonymous.
But you're completely okay with doxing Nazis or people you think are Nazis, but they aren't.
You want to be anonymous, they need to be dox.
You understand that when you say one rule for one, one rule for another, all you're saying is might makes right.
You understand this, right?
You fuck.
All you're saying is that it's okay when we do it, and if we're strong enough to do it, that makes it okay.
These people are cancer.
Fucking sign the petition, guys, because they have to be stopped.
And if we don't stop them by fair means, we're going to have to stop them by foul.
You know, I don't really want liberal or sort of center-right militias having to go out and beat the shit out of both the Nazis and the communists.
And then therefore we are able to move more freely and do what we need to do.
Commit violence.
That's what you need to do.
Commit violence.
Beat people.
Whether they're real Nazis or not, it doesn't really matter.
They're a target.
They're in your way.
And good God, the capitalist structure, they're probably sympathizers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Fuck you people.
Whether it is illegal or not.
So some people will push back on that and say that the black block is to keep people from being identified and arrested.
Just a terrorist group.
That's what they are.
These people are terrorists.
Why are you softballing this?
Did when they break the law, when they commit crime.
Damn right.
Oh my fucking God.
Look.
Look at that guy's fucking face.
Just fuck these people.
It's a good way to avoid the ramifications of law enforcement.
This is actually driving me nuts.
We have law enforcement for a reason.
We have laws for a reason.
These people should just all be arrested as terrorists.
We know it is, you terrorist scum.
That's what you are.
Don't fucking forget it.
It's also to avoid the far-right groups they're fighting and the harassment that each side often engages in.
We saw that firsthand at a May Day protest in New York City.
We cover our face because the Nazis will try to find out who we are.
And that is a very bad thing because they harass people.
They're the ones.
They say that we're the evil ones.
You do exactly what you've just said they will do to you.
You literally, I mean, they've shown it in this little bit, where you dox these Nazis and you find out who they are and you harass them.
You are literally complaining that they're going to do it to you.
You have no fucking principles.
You people need to be fucking stopped.
The alt left is cancer.
Sign the petition, guys.
And you guys in the media, you always tell us, oh, they're trying to fight for their free speech.
We're trying to stop them from organizing.
We're not trying to stop them through their free speech.
Because when they organize, they kill people.
They hurt people.
Who else hurts people when they organize?
Who else hurts people when they organize?
Oh, I don't know.
Dunno, just could be anyone.
Could be anyone.
I mean, you were protesting capitalism by beating people up and smashing things up.
Were you organizing to stop Nazis then?
Don't think you were.
And now the Nazis are on the streets because they've seen you smashing up all this shit.
No, no, no, no, now we've got, now there are Nazis that we need to stop.
No, fuck off.
Fuck off.
Believe it or not, right?
And one thing I really hate to say, really hate to say this.
Nazis have rights too.
They are citizens of your country.
Everyone in your country has rights.
You, them, me, anyone else.
The Nazis have the right to speak.
I hate to say it.
If you don't like it, maybe you should try something else.
Because as soon as you start trying to shut them down by force, you are violating their rights.
And so suddenly, I have to come to the defense of the Nazis.
and I really would rather not.
Well, they fight people, and we're the ones who are fighting back.
You started it.
You fucking started it.
Just like in Weimar, Germany, you fucking started it.
And since we're on the subject of Antifar this week, Eric Clanton, the bike lock attacker, has put out the statement of how he's a complete victim.
He's actually the victim of him smashing some kid over the head with a bike lock and, you know, making him bleed and whatnot.
He's the victim here.
He's, my name is Eric.
I'm currently facing years of prison time as the result of accusations made in the most shockingly hateful parts of the internet.
I began being targeted by a dedicated swarm of internet trolls known for spewing racism, xenophobia and misogyny on the web.
Oh god, I think I'm going to tear up.
Oh god, Eric, what will you do?
Apart from get fucked in the showers.
When I was interviewed at the police station, Detective Hong had the nerve to say to me, the internet did the work for us.
I'm not the person who's involved with any of that, but on behalf of the internet, I'd just like to say to Detective Hong, you're welcome.
But apparently there are people in the mainstream media who do understand that fighting the Nazis doesn't make Antifar the good guys.
Well done, Jonah Goldberg.
Have a gold star.
No wait.
I don't think that's the right idiom for this.
But he is absolutely right.
For example, this man was stabbed because his haircut got him mistaken for a neo-Nazi.
What I assume is a fashionable haircut amongst the kids these days is apparently something that they think is only worn by neo-Nazis.
Apparently my haircut is considered a neo-Nazi statement.
And so he got stabbed and he had three stitches.
That's lovely.
Isn't Antifar just a bunch of lovely, lovely people?
Now they're carrying knives and stabbing people.
Antifar are a terrorist organization.
Please sign the petition.
And I just want to say there are absolutely other ways of dealing with neo-Nazis that aren't violent and that won't actually cause them to feel like victims.
For example, you can mock them, you can parody them, or you can find an absolutely genius way of handling them.
And I've got to say, this is pretty fucking genius.
So in 2014, sponsors agreed to donate money for each step marched by neo-Nazis, with the cash going to programs that fight Nazis and try to deprogram people from being Nazis.
Instead of greeting the group with protests, they put up banners welcoming the neo-Nazis against Nazis walk-a-thon.
Okay, which is just brilliant.
I love it.
I absolutely love every second of it.
Just big pink banners with Nazis against Nazis walkathon.
Thanks for raising money.
Bravo.
Mocking signs throughout the route encourage them to keep walking to raise more money.
And organizers put out a table of bananas to help them keep their energy up so they could keep walking and raising money.
That is amazing.
They even painted numbers in the ground so neo-Nazi marchers would be forced to see how much money they'd collected at every milestone.
This is amazing.
This is how you do it.
You make them ridiculous.
You make them embarrassing.
You deliberately work against their aims without doing a damn thing.
This is perfect.
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