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Sept. 20, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
38:22
Tucker Carlson vs The Alt Left
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So I first heard of Tucker Carlson back in the days when I was a big fan of Jon Stewart, and he went on Crossfire to tell them that they ran a bad show.
wanted to I felt that that wasn't fair and I should come here and tell you that I don't it's not so much that it's bad as it's hurting America so I wanted to come here today let me and say wait wait I just don't let me hear Here's just what I wanted to tell you guys.
Yeah.
Stop.
Stop, stop, stop.
Stop hurting America.
I remember at the time thinking that this was not only hilarious, but precisely what people needed to hear.
And even back then, I could see that the political partisanship of English-speaking countries was growing out of control.
And so Jon Stewart felt like a necessary and far more objective voice on the situation.
He wasn't partisan of either side, or at least not noticeably.
And come work for us, because we, as the people.
How do you pay?
The people, not well.
Not at the CNN, I'm sure.
But you can sleep at night.
See, the thing is, we need your help.
Right now, you're helping the politicians and the corporations, and we're left out there to mow our line.
No, no, no, you're not too rough on them.
You're part of their strategies.
Your partisan, what do you call it?
Hacks.
And oh my God, the motherfucking irony as we fast forward 10 years and you're softballing Hillary Clinton.
Let me ask you a question.
Do you like commuting to work or do you like a home office?
But then if I'm being really honest with myself and not just getting past my bias in your favor, I guess I'd probably say you were doing the same thing back then.
Three of the questions you asked John.
You have a chance to interview the Democratic nominee.
You asked him questions such as, quote, how are you holding up?
But I haven't really noticed much of a detectable change in Tucker Carlson.
He has at least been a consistent stock Republican, in my opinion, which makes it all the more amusing when he has to deal with the raving lunacy of the radical left.
Take, for example, the accusation of racism leveled at the Star-Spangled Banner.
Jefferson Morley is a writer at Alternet.
He wrote a book, Snowstorm in August, Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835.
He has called the national anthem a neo-Confederate symbol.
It says it's time to, quote, examine it.
Jefferson Morley joins us tonight.
Thanks for coming on.
Save time, I'm going to skip to the relevant points, but of course, all of the links will be in the description.
I didn't say it was a racist anthem.
I'm not a vandal, so don't try and attribute that to me.
What I said was, and this is true.
This is true.
The Star-Spangled Banner was not the national anthem from when it was written from 1814 until 1931.
So the story, what I want to do is I want people to know the real history of the Star Spangled Banner.
Why is it our national anthem?
And the reason it's our national anthem is because a group of people who I would describe as neo-Confederates campaigned throughout the 1920s to get the Star Spangled Banner designated as the national anthem.
And when that happened, they celebrated by marching in a parade in Baltimore in June 1931 behind two flags, the Confederate flag and the Star Spangled Banner.
So the people who wanted to make the Star-Spangled Banner the national anthem considered it a victory for the Confederate cause.
So to summarize this guy's position then, the Star-Spangled Banner in and of itself is not racist.
It contains no racist words, doesn't even allude to racism.
But some of the people who did like it were racists.
Am I missing anything out of that summary?
But naturally, Tucker's guest is acting like anything a racist has touched becomes racist in turn, somehow infected by the spreading disease of racism.
It doesn't surprise me that people with creepy views like the Star-Spangled Banner, they probably also like dogs and pecans.
And I like, you know, it doesn't just qualify me as a dog owner because they like dogs.
No, I mean, no, no, what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is the people who wanted this to happen the most, the people who were most in favor of the Star-Spangled Banner, were neo-Confederates.
So what?
If you went back in time and spoke to an abolitionist, I don't think they would tell you that the black man should be the equal of the white man, just that it was immoral to keep them enslaved.
So I think that's what's important at a time when we have a lot of controversies about the Star-Spangled Banner.
Colin Kaepernick, is he a hero like a lot of us think, or is he a bum like other people?
But hold on.
So before we even get into Colin Kaepernick and other overpaid athletes and their phony social activism, is there the question is, is there something inherently, intrinsically troubling about the Star-Spangled Banner?
Your case is that people with views you don't like liked it.
Okay, that doesn't mean anything.
I mean, they'd probably like Picasso paintings too, or whatever.
It doesn't devalue the paintings.
No, what I'm saying is...
There's something inherently wrong with the song.
No, what I'm saying is we should know the real history of the song because it's so central to these controversies that we have.
But as you have already conceded to Tucker, that doesn't matter.
It's irrelevant.
It doesn't make it racist, and therefore it doesn't change anything that's happening now.
But this is part of a systematic campaign to steadily delegitimize all of the pillars of American society, isn't it?
That's the thing.
It's not that there's something wrong with the Star-Spangled Banner.
It's that there's something wrong with the people who campaigned to institute the Star-Spangled Banner.
And therefore, the Star-Spangled Banner itself, a symbol of America, can be adequately deconstructed and eventually removed.
That's the point behind this, because this is just guilt by association.
There's absolutely nothing here.
But did they like the song?
This is why there's a hole in your logic progression here.
Did they like the song for racist reasons?
Is there something racist about the song?
No, what they were trying to do was send the message.
And this is the same motivation that led to the Star-Spangled Banner being designated the national anthem is the same motivation that led to, for example, the statues to men who took up arms against the Constitution in defense of slavery.
I'm just going to take it on faith that you are in fact a mind reader and you do actually know exactly what they were thinking.
It doesn't really matter because this is the part that was important.
Did they like the song for racist reasons?
Is there something racist about the song?
No.
No.
They didn't like it for racist reasons because it's not a racist song.
So it doesn't matter what their motivations were because they've instituted something that was not racist.
And your problem is with racism.
And thus the Star-Spangled Banner does not fall under that purview.
You need to look elsewhere, my friend.
The point is, is that this kind of racism is baked into some of our public symbols.
But not the Star-Spangled Banner.
As you have conceded multiple times in this conversation so far, it's not a racist symbol, so why are you bringing it up?
And I think it's because you're a writer for alt-left publication Alternet.
So far left, it's just gone straight over the horizon.
And deconstructing American symbols is part of the goals of these sites.
That's what the far left wants.
We're at a time now because we have a president who says white supremacists are good people.
He said there were good people on both sides, which means that he thinks there are alt-left commies who are good people.
Equally wrong, in my opinion.
But it doesn't really matter because that was clearly a conciliatory statement he was making in order to try and lower the general level of hysteria.
But it doesn't seem to be possible because literally all you do is take one thing out of context and blow it out of proportion and suddenly a non-racist song is racist.
I mean, there's nothing racist about the Star Spangled Banner.
That's the point.
And you're sort of eliding around it, implying that there's something racist, but you're not.
No, no, no, no.
I don't think there's something racist about the Star Spangled Banner.
Well, then Tucker Carlson wins.
You don't think there's anything racist about the Star Spangled Banner?
End of story.
But.
What I'm saying is very precise.
Neo-Confederates made it that.
So why is that?
Who cares?
Neo-Confederates did something that wasn't racist.
Maybe we should actually be applauding them for that.
And these people have all been dead for decades.
So I don't see what difference any of this makes.
What does that tell us?
That the radical left have become witch hunters and inquisitors, and they can sniff out the unclean and the racist from 100 yards.
The thing is, I'm not even joking.
This is exactly where you're going with this.
That tells us that racism has been somehow tinges or has affected our notions of public memory.
How is it patriotism?
Well, what did I say?
You're all tainted with the stench of racism.
Oh, you're not a racist, but I can smell it.
You've been near it.
You've come into contact with it.
And now you're impure too.
You're also unclean.
Jokes aside, this really is just a monumental purity test.
And they have found the Star Spangled Banner wanting because it was promoted by people of inferior moral development.
The Star Spangled Banner.
If I'm with my kids at a baseball game singing it, should I keep in mind the wackos 80 years ago who also liked it?
Like, why is that relevant?
And doesn't, in fact, that devalue it to me and my kids.
It makes me like the country less.
Like, why is that useful to know?
It's irrelevant in any sense that I can understand.
No, that's like saying it's irrelevant that we have a memorial to Confederate war here.
No, it's not because the Confederate memorial is inherently controversial because it's to Confederates.
The Star Spangled Banner has no reference to race.
It's an American song.
There's nothing racist about the song itself.
And you're trying to introduce into the public consciousness this idea that there is something inherently controversial.
Listen to that stuttering.
He wants to start backpedaling now because he realizes that that's exactly what he's doing.
And that sounds terrible.
I'm trying to remind people of the history of how this came about.
Yeah, and why are you trying to do that?
Let's go to a quick flashback.
That tells us that racism has been somehow tinges or has affected our notions of public memory.
I just can't see how this guy can think he is not trying to associate the Star Spangled Banner with connotations of racism because that really seems to be what he's trying to do.
And I don't want to sit there and assume bad faith on his part, but it's really hard to believe that he doesn't believe that's what he's doing.
And saying this is relevant to the controversies that we have today.
Like, so relevant how?
Should we feel guilty when we sing it?
No, we should just know it.
No one that racists liked it, but it's not a racist song.
Like, why is that relevant?
It's the real history of the song.
You didn't know that.
Absolutely irrelevant.
And Tucker Carlson nailed him on every point here.
The Star Spangled Banner is not racist.
It doesn't have racist connotations.
It doesn't use racist language.
And there were non-racists who supported it in addition to racists.
And I wasn't joking early.
The old left literally have written books to explain how the abolitionists were also racists.
Because they were.
But that doesn't discredit the value of abolitionism.
But hey, we really don't know what the 2018 agenda for the regressive left is going to be.
Maybe it will be bring back slavery because black people were better off under it or something like that.
Who knows?
They may well come full circle.
So anyway, let's move on to the next one.
You listened to the inaugural.
Where was the white supremacist part?
I mean, Donald Trump is harkened back to the Nixon strategy.
He's used the Lee Atwater playbook pretty much since he's not.
What does that down there?
What does that mean?
I mean, it's seriously, let's be precise.
She said the speech was a white nationalist speech.
I listened to the speech.
He talked all about how we need to rebuild our inner cities, which are not primarily white, as you know.
How is that a white nationalist speech?
Because we know what Donald Trump was actually hearkening to was that...
I'm so glad we found another mind reader amongst the progressive inquisition.
Please go on, sir.
Tell us what Donald Trump was really thinking.
Urban cities are nothing but forgotten places where African Americans are nothing but criminals.
It's why when he made the comments coming down the elevator, or escalator, rather, at Trump Tower, he talked about Mexicans were rapists.
Tucker rightly interrupts here because what the hell has that got to do with his opinions on Mexican illegal immigrants?
He didn't even say it was Mexicans.
He said it was illegal immigrants.
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
Mexican immigrants and Americans who live in inner cities are two different groups.
He's saying, I mean, I watched the speech.
Whatever you think of what he's done or whatever, he was saying, look, these places have been ignored.
They're run entirely by Democrats, as you know.
As vote farms.
I love how he just concedes that with a weary nod.
Yes, the Democrats are presiding over the complete collapse of black communities in these inner cities.
There's really nothing I can say about that.
But let me tell you about Republican gerrymandering.
Which Republicans have made sure to ensure that Democrats are not.
They're voted by Democrats.
They're super depressing.
They're horrible.
And here's Trump saying, let's fix these places.
And that's white nationalism?
Kind of a weird version of white nationalism.
Let's not pretend that Donald Trump really wants to fix the problems at the time.
Why would he say it?
Why wouldn't Donald Trump want to solve these problems?
He looks like he wants to solve problems.
Whether he can solve problems or not is a completely different issue.
But if you listen to his UN speech, it's really revealing.
He is literally like a hardcore tribalistic American patriot.
And to be honest with you, at the moment, that is not the worst thing one can be.
Because he's hearkening back to a message.
Because the Klan wants to hear him talk about how we need to send more money to Detroit?
No.
I mean, like, he doesn't make any sense.
Tucker's absolutely got him.
And his response to this is just bewildering.
Think about it.
Chicago.
He often uses Chicago as his fallback to why urban areas have been forgotten, why black people should vote for him.
As he said in his own words, vote for me.
What else do you have to do?
Listen, you're completely wrong here, and I'll tell you why.
Not only is he completely in the right when he says, listen, what else do you have to lose?
These communities are suffering from abject deprivation, severe social issues with severe criminal elements.
And that's your argument.
To be clear, that's what you think.
And you think racism has caused that.
And it turns out that however many years of Democrat rule over these cities has failed to improve it.
So maybe the Democrats are a bunch of giant racists.
These communities are surely at rock bottom.
And if not, how much worse does it have to get for them to decide that maybe the people ruling over them need to be changed?
The funniest bit about this, though, was hearing left-wing politicians suddenly undermining their own messaging by saying, well, wait a minute, wait a minute.
It's not all bad.
You can't just say these communities are terrible just because all we've been saying for the last God knows how many years is that these communities are really terrible.
It was actually quite an amazing move because it's making you face up to your own failures.
The Democrats have failed these communities.
They haven't improved them.
They've got worse.
Just apply logic here just for really quick.
I know it never happens in Washington.
But if you were really a racist, if you were a white nationalist who wanted to hurt non-white people, you'd be pretty psyched about what's going on in Chicago.
No, I mean, you wouldn't be because what you're saying is African Americans shooting each other.
So why would you be worried about that if you were a racist?
But see, that's the narrative that certain media companies have used.
The actual rate of people killing each other.
Black people are killing black people because we all live in the same neighborhood.
But I'm not even a kid.
But I'm not even taking separate crime.
I'm not making that point.
Tucker says that he's not making that point, but fuck me, I'll take that one.
Are you insane?
Oh, it's just black people killing black people because they live around black people.
Okay, that's true.
That's why it's mostly blacks killing blacks and whites killing whites.
But let's take a look at the relative numbers, shall we?
While looking up the statistics of this, I found an article on the Channel 4 website, which is a terrestrial TV station in the UK.
And usually rather lefty, so I'm going to use them because they were forced to tell the truth, and I do so like it when the left is forced to tell the truth.
So it comes couched in the question from James.
It's important to note that black men commit nearly half of all murders in this country, which is astounding when you take into consideration the fact they only make up 12 to 13% of the population.
This is actually not true because black men make up around 6-7% of the population.
But anyway, Channel 4 have to say it's true that around 13% of Americans are black, according to the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
And yes, according to the Bureau of Justice statistics, black offenders committed 52% of homicides recorded in the data between 1918 and 2008.
Only 45% of the offenders were white.
Blacks were disproportionately likely to commit homicide and be the victims.
In 2008, the offending rate for blacks was seven times higher than for whites, and the victimization rate was six times higher.
93% of black victims were killed by blacks, and 84% of white victims were killed by whites.
And out of all of the information we have here, that last sentence is what he chooses to focus on.
As if the staggering difference in these relative numbers is of absolutely no consequence.
It's just fine that 7% of the people in that country make up 50% of the murders.
It's just fine.
But Donald Trump's a racist.
I'm just saying, if you were a racist, you would not be concerned about what's happening on the south side of Chicago.
Which means the man that Tucker Carlson is talking to is a racist because he has literally just dismissed what's happening on the south side of Chicago and every other black inner city that has severe problems with gang crime.
Here's what she said in that ludicrous interview with Jane Paul.
Trump was successful in referencing nostalgia that would give hope, comfort, and settle grievances for millions of people who were upset about the gains made by others.
Let's look specifically at what you're saying is millions of white people, Pauly said.
Millions of white people, yeah, Clinton replied.
Now, imagine if Mitt Romney had said in a post-election interview, I lost because of millions of resentful black people.
Yeah.
If he had said, no, he did.
After he lost the election, he came out and said, the reason I lost is because Obama was willing to give to takers and I wasn't.
And thank you for proving my point.
He thinks that black people are takers.
It's not that there aren't also white people who are takers that Obama was pandering to in Mitt Romney's opinion.
This was a capitalist statement.
It wasn't a racialist statement.
But this guy actually is a racist.
He actually thinks black people equals takers.
And so when Mitt Romney says he's talking about the takers, Mitt Romney in his mind is talking about black people because that's how he thinks of it.
If he had said millions of resentful black people voted for me because they don't like whites, I would have said, Mitt Romney, that's a disgusting thing to say.
I never would have stood by while he said something like that.
That's an awful thing to say.
I can't believe she said that.
I mean, blaming people by their race?
Like, what is this?
Anyway, you allowed to do that now?
And inadvertently, Tucker shows us exactly why the right lost the culture war to the left.
He's taking his cues from him.
No, Tucker, you've just disagreed on points of principle.
You stand by it.
You don't say, is it okay to do that now?
No, you say, it's not okay to do that.
Full stop.
Hillary Clinton was not blaming people by their race specifically.
He said it right here.
Millions of white people specifically.
Making America great again.
Where did that come from?
From Nixon.
Literally, the campaign slogan of Donald Trump was the campaign slogan that Richard Nixon used.
That's an absolutely fascinating diversion, but what's that got to do with Hillary Clinton blaming millions of resentful white people?
You know, judging them by their race, en masse, all of them.
To the violence of the value, it's a pretty obvious one.
I mean, let's take our country back.
Where did that go?
The country's in decline.
Any person awake who's like, I'm in my late 40s, I've lived it.
Everyone knows that.
It's not racist to note that.
It's also not racist to note that rich people, all of whom are liberal, by the way, have a disproportionately.
There are some rich conservatives, but in general, the richer you are, the more liberal you are.
Look at the exopolit.
I hang out with a lot of races.
Well, okay, there are some, but I'm just saying overall, they have a disproportionate amount of power.
Never before in American life has power been concentrated in fewer tits than it is now.
I agree with you.
So Trump ran against all that.
There's nothing with race at all.
What he's talking about here is the cultural power of the hyper-progressive liberal elite, as we have seen in many cringeworthy award ceremonies of late.
And all of a sudden he's a white nationalist?
Like, what you're missing is what's actually happening in America.
I agree with you.
Democrats need a more economic message.
This is just the most corporate response you can imagine.
Yes, the economic messaging, right?
That's where we should have been applying ourselves better, but we will do next time.
You're not listening to the concerns.
You're not listening to the real issues being raised.
And you're not really taking the sorts of, I guess, people-focused approach that Tucker Carlson is trying to take.
You think?
I think that that's something that Democrats are going to be better with doing.
Millions of white people.
By the way, I don't think you should be allowed to dismiss people on the basis of their race.
Like, we should just say that's a rule.
Millions of white people.
I think we should stop right there.
If I was doing the interview, I'd say, whoa, wait, wait a second.
But what did you just say?
Hillary Clinton didn't dismiss people by their race.
Yes, she did.
She did.
That's not the same.
This is the transcript of the interview.
You're giving a portion, half of a sentence of what she said.
I read the entire paragraph.
What she's saying is people said about gains made by others.
Resentment, they didn't like seeing people who don't look like them succeed, so they voted for Donald Trump.
This was just great because Tucker just blows him out of the water with that.
And the guy has to change tack.
He obviously, that's an indefensible position.
I'll try another one.
But the idea of trying to find some kind of truth in all of this, completely gone.
Donald Trump exploited white people's fears after Obama.
I guess what I'm against is making it.
The thing is, what he's saying there isn't an untrue statement.
It's just a misleading one.
It's not like Donald Trump was holding Klan rallies saying that niggas are taking over the country, the white man's on the verge of extinction.
But he was exploiting the fears of white people, but not because they were white.
It was because they had a certain set of concerns.
Trump had those concerns, and those concerns were not necessarily racist, which is why Trump had more non-white people vote for him than Romney.
If Trump were a racist, I'm sure he would have had less.
So finally, let's finish with Tucker Carlson taking on an anti-far professor.
Mike Isaacson is professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
He founded the Antifa group Smash Racism DC and he joins us tonight.
Professor, thanks for coming on.
Hi, how you doing?
Okay.
First, we're not going to laugh at his neck.
Second, we're not going to laugh at his hair.
Third, we're not going to laugh at his voice.
And fourth, we're not going to laugh at the fact that he calls himself a revolutionary.
Thank you for having me.
So your position, tell me if I'm mischaracterizing this, is people you define as fascist do not have free speech rights.
No.
My position is that communities have the right to defend themselves against groups that actively seek to eliminate members of that community.
You can already see where this is going.
That means that your speech is violence, and that violence is being done against our community.
And therefore, it's acceptable for, oh, I don't know, a gang of brown shirts on the social media to find a Nazi and then just knock him out just for the fun of it?
I mean, that's not a problem, is it?
Being a Nazi is illegal, isn't it?
defend themselves against violence or defend themselves against violence.
I mean, we were talking about.
No, but no, but physical violence.
So if I say violence again.
A group that has a history of crimes.
No, we're not going to.
Are we going to pretend like we're just suddenly in this ahistorical world where Dylan Roof or Wade Michael Page doesn't exist, where Anders Breivik doesn't exist?
Are you kidding me?
Are you kidding me?
You're a fucking communist.
You're living in a world where Pol Pot, Joseph Starling, and Mao Zedong don't exist.
You are advocating for communism, you fucking lunatic.
And you're sat there going, oh, you know who's violent?
You know who's dangerous?
The alt-right.
And it's like, okay, maybe they are.
But again, like the chap talking about the murder rate in black communities, let's talk about the relative numbers.
But isn't this just great?
I mean, look at his face.
He's pretending to be outraged with a smile on his face.
He's having fun being outraged.
Are you kidding me?
Just like Carl the Cook.
These people are not offended.
They're not outraged.
This is a game to them.
No, are you only a professor, by the way?
What?
so here's here's the question though is it five we're not going to laugh at his mannerisms either Past statements that have espoused violence or is it acts of violence?
So could you could you know talk about you?
Hold on.
Let me just finish my question.
Could you commit violence against me if you thought that I had a history of saying things that you imagined were violent?
I would never commit violence against you.
I actually, when I was younger, I was a libertarian and I actually looked up to you when you were a libertarian.
Okay, but let's take me out of this.
Let's just, I want to know, like, the concept of self-defense is a legal concept, but it's also got like a long history and tradition in common law.
So the idea is if I'm hitting you, if I strike you physically, if I physically commit violence against you, you have a right to commit violence back in order to protect yourself or your property.
But you're seeming to say that anybody who has espoused ideas that have at some point in history led to violence can be the subject of violence from you.
You're not saying that.
No, I'm not saying that.
Except for when you did say that.
Espouse violence or is it acts of violence?
But only now you're not saying that because it sounds bad.
What I'm saying is that I believe it is the right for communities to get together to assess what is a threat to them and to defend themselves against that threat.
And then he falls back on the regressive cookie-cutter rhetoric that he feels justifies all of this.
But the thing is, communities do not have the right to do this.
Individuals have the right to do this.
And they can only defend themselves from violence when violence is being done to them.
This guy is making up a form of group rights for these communities.
And as a form of collectivism, group rights naturally trump individual rights, which is why they must be prohibited.
Groups must not have rights.
So give me an example.
Like what public figure in America right now could be shut down, could have his free speech rights taken away and could be the subject of violence under the standards you're describing.
Well, I mean, for instance, I think that the framework here of talking about violence as opposed to talking about preserving the very freedoms that you and I both enjoy.
That you are in no way interested in preserving because you are, as you have just stated, for group rights.
You are for privilege for some and not for others.
Tucker and myself and most other people in the centre left and the center right are for universal rights, rights that cannot be infringed because a group of people decide that it's okay to infringe them.
Ultimately, we're talking about a movement that actively advocates against all the fetters of democracy.
Said the communist.
This guy is in no way in favor of individual rights or democracy, and he's acting like he is.
That, in my opinion, is duplicitous.
He is deliberately trying to deceive Tucker.
And I think he knows it, which is why he's being so playful.
I mean, we're talking about Richard Spencer, who publishes an alt-right.com, publishes an article on July 28th by a man named Vincent Law, where the headline was, to protect free speech, get rid of democracy.
Honestly, this is incredible because this guy doesn't care about democracy either.
He was suspended for tweeting it's a privilege to teach future dead cops, in which he said, you might think it sucks being an anti-fascist teaching at John Jay College, but I think it's a privilege to teach future dead cops.
Weren't you my Econ professor?
See, you have the opportunity.
Blade Drops.
Jokes about my students getting executed in the rev.tumbler.com.
He seems to think he's LARPing during the uprising of the Paris Commune.
That he has the temerity to criticize Richard Spencer for wanting to overthrow democracy, if indeed that is even his position, is pretty fucking incredible.
Um, so, we really have to...
Okay, well, you know what, okay, so let's use that example.
I disagree with that.
I haven't seen the piece, but it doesn't sound like something I'd agree with.
It's not.
Does Richard Spencer have a right to speak in public?
The answer is yes.
But let's hear what our dear professor has to say.
Richard Spencer is a danger to society.
When he speaks in public, what he is doing, he is publicly recruiting people to his very violent movement, very violent ideology.
If that is the standard that makes someone a danger to society, don't you think you have rather indicted yourself as well?
Because you are doing precisely the same thing.
Does he have a right to speak in public?
I don't think he has a right to speak in public unopposed.
And there you have it.
The communist does not think that their fascist opponent has any rights.
And that's what this boils down to.
He doesn't believe Richard Spencer has rights.
And that is ultimately what the purpose of Antifa is, is to show up and oppose him.
The purpose of Antifar is to deny the rights of people they believe are fascists.
Yes, we know.
And your definition of what a fascist is is rather malleable.
But it's not opposition.
You shut people down, you prevent them from speaking, and you commit violence against them.
I know a number of people.
Don't tell me it's not true.
I know people who've been knocked down and beaten by people from Antifa.
Imagine trying to deny that Antifar have been violent.
Just imagine the headspace you must be in.
You are just a naked partisan from this point onwards.
To say that Antifar aren't violent is just to deny video evidence.
So that is true.
It does happen.
We have it on tape.
We just roll the tape.
And he stops himself because he knows he's got no argument.
He knows that literally anything he says from this point is just going to be manifestly ridiculous and make him look silly.
But he doesn't care.
He doesn't actually care.
He's just there for PR reasons, damage control.
That's all he's going to do.
He's going to deny and deflect literally everything.
To the point where Tucker Carlson is saying, look, we have video evidence.
And he's like, well, I want to argue the case, but even I have limits.
You're saying is that justified?
Yes.
I believe that communities have the right to defend themselves against threats to themselves to their community, against ideas they don't like.
No, they have a right to people who have explicitly said that they want to eliminate those people from our society.
That's great and all, but that legitimizes any kind of violence against anyone who expresses any of these ideas.
And I just want to stress that you might be rather protective of some of the people who express ideas like that.
I know it because they have retina scans, they have what they call racial profiling, DNA banks, and they're monitoring our people to try to prevent the one person from coming up with the one idea.
And the one idea is how we are going to exterminate white people.
By this guy's logic, anything the alt-right were to do to that guy is totally justified.
But you're conflating, you're conflating violence with ideas.
No.
If I have not raised my hand to strike you, you have no right to strike me.
But in order to raise your hand to strike me, you have to think that you're going to strike me.
And there we have the admission that they're, in fact, the thought police.
It doesn't matter what you do.
It matters what you think.
In his mind, you aren't defined by your actions.
You are defined by your beliefs.
So if you believe the right thing and do the wrong thing, that's okay.
If you believe the wrong thing and do the right thing, that's wrong.
And when you are going out in public as a protester, explicitly saying that you want to eliminate most of the people from this country, I believe most of the people in this country have the right to say, no, that's not okay.
Thus demonstrating that he is actually conflating words and actions.
Because we're not talking about whether it's okay for them to object to Richard Spencer.
That isn't the debate.
The question is whether it's okay to assault Richard Spencer.
And he thinks it is because he consistently conflates words with violence.
Okay, but it's you absolutely have a right to say it's not okay.
What you don't have a right is to prevent me from saying what I think, even if you disagree.
And you definitely don't have a right to commit violence against me.
And you're blurring the lines there.
And by the way, don't you work at a criminal?
It's hilarious.
Okay, you don't have the right to do that.
You have the right to make a countercase.
Do you see the distinctions I'm making?
Tucker, when I walked into this building, I counted five security guards at the front door and two police cars outside.
Are you going to tell me that the violence that they would enact against someone who's looking to do you or any number of the people that work here harm?
Are you going to tell me that the violence that they enact to protect preemptively the staff that are protected also by the barricades that you have?
I don't even know what you're talking about.
I'm not honestly not following you.
Are you protecting?
That's because I'm not a tendency.
Security don't start preemptively killing people over their thoughts.
They kill them over actions.
For example, if you walk in with a drawn gun, yeah, you might get shot.
But that's not the same as having a political opinion.
This guy is so disingenuous, it's actually infuriating.
And he sat there with this smarmy look on his face like he is the one in the right.
He's completely unjustified and he knows it.
But because he is so well educated, he is a slippery fish and Tucker has trouble nailing him down on any one point.
Well, I actually don't have security, but there is security at security in your building, for sure.
And the reason that there is lots of buildings and the reason that there is security is that people are building violence.
No, the reason that you have security is because ultimately that security provides a space for non-violent civil discourse, which is ultimately true.
So now there are lots of million distinctions here, but you don't own the public square.
You don't even have charge of the public and you're not publicizing.
I love that this guy just keeps shooting himself in the foot by just trying to gish gallop Tucker Carlson.
Yes, the public is not in control of the public, which is why we imbue the government with the monopoly on force to make them in control of the public, which is why you don't have the right to form anti-fark gangs to go around attacking people you disagree with.
That's you've really hit on it right there, which is great, but instead of being a defense of your point, it's a defense of Tucker's point, you fucking idiot.
We are talking about a system that has been gerrymandering people out of public representation, okay?
And what's that got to do with Richard Spencer?
You don't think that Richard Spencer's been gerrymandering people out of whatever it is you're concerned about, do you?
If we're relying on the cops, ultimately those cops are working for the very people that you work for and not in the interest of the vast majority of society.
You're right.
Yeah.
Yeah, because protecting people's rights is not in the interest of the vast majority of society.
Right.
So you've completely delegitimized the police, the right-wing media, and the government, presumably when it's controlled by right-wingers, because they're not operating in the, quote, vast majority of society, even though protecting people's rights is working in the interests of the vast majority of society.
Regardless of their political bias, protecting left-wing rights and right-wing rights is just as useful for both.
We don't have representation.
We have defined representation by the state.
We don't.
Eight years of a black president, you liar.
Last question.
Do you teach students?
I do.
I guess he spoke a bit too soon on that one.
And do you teach them that the First Amendment does not apply to people they disagree with?
I teach them to think critically, and that's why I'm very open about my ancestralism and my anarchism.
Translation, I'm very open about my communism and desire to overthrow capitalism and the government, by the way.
I mean, just don't.
I mean, Richard Spencer's a problem, but I don't need to be punched, even though I am literally as bad, if not worse, than Spencer.
So if someone in your class said, you know what, I'm a Trump voter.
I'm against affirmative action.
I've had those, and I encourage them to research and explore and hold them to the exact same standards they'd hold any other student.
Yeah, I bet.
I do.
I had an alt-right supporter actually in my class last semester.
I worked with him on his papers.
He started off kind of bad at citation.
I got him better at citation, and he wrote a paper that was in a paper.
I mean, I am not discriminating against my students.
I found that last bit really amazing because it shows that he sees the value in being objective and impartial and fair.
And he's taking pride in that right there.
He's like, no, no, no, I do.
I treat my students equally.
I don't discriminate.
Okay, why can't we have that in the society around us?
Why not advocate for that?
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