All Episodes
Oct. 22, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
27:35
This Week in Stupid (22⧸10⧸2017)
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 22nd of October 2017.
If I look like I'm jetlagged to hell, that's because I'm jetlagged to hell.
I'd missed this in last week's episode.
Apple's diversity VP had apologised for her controversial statement at the Apple Summit.
What a terrible and tragic thing.
She said nothing wrong.
Sir Denise Young-Smith, Apple's VP of Inclusion and Diversity, had apologised for saying diversity is the human experience, because that's...offensive? It's offensive that white people could also be diverse?
When the alt-rights say, you know, diversity is just code word for anti-white, it's really hard to refute that when simply calling white people diverse is offensive and has to be apologised for.
You understand that you make it look like they're correct.
I'm just saying because I really don't know what else to make of this.
What is she apologizing for?
So she says, last week while attending a summit in Bogota, I made some comments as part of a conversation on the many factors that contribute to diversity and inclusion.
I regret the choice of words I used to make this point.
Yeah, how dare you say that white men can also be different?
I understand why some people took offense.
My comments were not representative of how I think about diversity or how Apple sees it.
For that, I'm sorry.
Isn't that amazing?
Diversity is a human experience.
How dare you?
You must apologize.
Oh god, I better apologize.
My job depends on it.
This is exactly the point.
She says, understanding that diversity includes women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and all underrepresented minorities is at the heart of our work to create an environment that is inclusive of everyone.
She didn't say they weren't.
She was actually giving like a ludicrous example.
Even a room of 12 white men could be diverse, because all of them inevitably will be diverse, because all of these people are individuals with individual life experiences and different views on the world.
But you didn't also include all of these non-white people, therefore, it's not diverse.
They literally think that diversity can't include white men.
The less white men there are, the more diverse it is.
I'm honestly staggered at the implications for this.
This is almost a demonstration of social justice as a caste system.
You can't have a room full of white men.
Why?
Because they're the untouchables.
They're not diverse.
What you need are women, which are slightly more diverse than the men, but people of colour are really more, they're way more diverse.
But if you can get some trans people in there, even better.
And trans women of colour, right at the top of the stack.
I can't believe anyone would want to live in a society this way.
This is terrifying to me, this kind of social planning.
What I love about this is how unbelievably first world it is.
These are the problems that women, people of colour, LGBTQ people, and underrepresented minorities are facing in the Western world right now.
The idea that maybe white men can also have the diversity privilege they enjoy.
In Pakistan, they're currently mainstreaming misogynist tribal justice.
I've actually done videos on Pakistan's tribal justice on my second channel.
They use tribal courts called jurgas to essentially meet out the worst kind of injustices.
I just can't get over how awful it is.
This is actually one of the more mild examples.
One evening in August, Bhakta Jan, a 15-year-old girl, attempted to elope with her boyfriend before she could meet him.
Relatives found her and brought her home.
Although both families agreed on a swift marriage for their children, a jurga or tribal council demanded blood.
Obeying its edict, Miss Buck's father drugged and then electrocuted her.
Could have been worse, actually.
That's actually a surprisingly mild thing for her to have to suffer.
Her boyfriend was murdered by his own father in the same way the next day, restoring honor in the eyes of the jurger.
Well, at least she wasn't raped in front of a council of elders.
And then murdered.
Which is things that happened.
I'll leave a link in the description to the video that I'm talking about.
It's just the most barbaric thing in the world, which is why such barbarism has become synonymous with Jurgis.
Yeah, it is unbelievable.
Pakistan is a nuclear power.
It's so awful.
And these people are whinging that white men might also be diverse.
And yeah, this is despite the fact that the Pakistani government has actually gone out of its way to try and suppress these Jurgis as well.
As they point out, in 2011, police can arrest members of Jurgis suspected of anti-women practices.
Grotesque abuses continue unabated, activists say.
Muktamai, this is the one I was covering on the video, actually, who was gang raped on the orders of a jurger in 2002 as recompense for a sexual assault supposedly committed by a male relative.
She didn't do anything wrong.
Her brother did.
And so she got raped in front of the tribal council by God knows who.
It's so backwards.
Instead of trying to stamp out Jurgis, however, the government has decided to integrate them into the informal justice system.
This year it won a parliamentary approval for a law that gives their rulings force.
Doesn't really matter if it does or doesn't, does it?
After you've been raped, they're not going to be able to un-rape you.
It's too late by then.
I mean, literally, just the one above three months ago, a 16-year-old girl suffered horrifically similar revenge rape in the same province.
It doesn't matter.
You know, you can't take that back.
You fucking lunatics.
Honestly, you need to stamp this out wherever you find it.
Literally, everyone involved in any Jurger should go straight to jail.
No, you don't do this anymore.
You use a fucking court like a civilized country that doesn't involve raping someone innocent as a punishment.
You fucking savages.
Holy shit.
Oh, don't culturally shame them.
All cultures are saying, no, I'm going to culturally shame the shit out of them.
You are backwards barbarians.
End of story.
Oh, that's racist.
No, it's not.
Because some Pakistanis are against it.
The government's actually tried to stop this.
It's these fucking tribes who are backwards savages.
Fuck you, progressive assholes.
Defending them, ordering rapes.
And I'm just pre-empting what I know is going to come.
Anyway, the government, this, this really pisses me off.
This, this just, this.
The fact this exists and is just considered something.
it really pisses me off because this is the sort of thing I would really expect to see a feminist campaign against.
And this is why I just can't, this is just one more reason why I can't stand modern feminism.
Now it is about narcissistic cunts virtue signaling.
That's what it's about.
It's not about helping women.
These women are legitimately in need of help.
Oh, but white men are encroaching on our diversity privilege.
No, get fucked.
A, fuck your privileges.
B, there are actually people who need help.
I mean, you sh I can't believe feminists aren't doing anything about this.
But do you see anything?
I see feminist news all the time, and it never talks about jurgers.
Unsurprisingly, I guess I can get kind of inconvenient with the progressive stack, because women are only one step above men if they're white.
If they're brown, they're a little bit higher, but, you know, Muslims are really oppressed.
They're really high up on there.
So the government will appoint neutral arbiters to each jurger who must approve their verdicts, a measure it hopes will eliminate misogynist horrors.
Yeah, let's hope it does, but I'm really not going to hold my breath.
I can't believe this is even something that, like, oh, well, maybe we should try and tone the jurgers down a bit.
No, maybe you should outlaw the fucking things.
MPs seem untroubled by the plan.
Just 23 of the 342 members of the lower house bothered to vote on it.
The debate centered on whether to use the term jurga even given its diabolical reputation rather than on whether reform itself was a good idea.
Brilliant.
Honestly, I wouldn't expect too much in the way of women's rights from Pakistan.
Just saying, you know, in case you happen to be concerned about women's rights at all, which I instantly am.
Which is why I'm covering this.
And I guess the reverse is why feminists aren't.
Support for jurgers stems as much from the disrepair of the formal courts as from a respect for tradition.
The judiciary is smothered with a backlog of 2 million cases.
Lawsuits take almost a decade to resolve on average.
Holy shit.
Lawyers often charge exorbitant fees in advance.
All this puts the formal justice system out of reach for many Pakistanis, I suppose it would.
This is not a gross injustice in itself.
It is also bad for security says, can't pronounce that, a former chief of police of the state of, I can't pronounce that either.
Such was the frustration with the courts in the northern district of Swats, I can pronounce that, that the Taliban won local support by promising speedy justice when they took control of the area.
Hmm.
So apparently a former bureaucrat who runs a popular jurga in the city of Rawalpindi, close to Islamabad, argues that informal justice does not deserve its reputation.
Only a sliver of the caseload concerns sexual or marital disputes, he argues.
And only jurgers and illiterate backwaters produce the sort of decisions that end up making shocking headlines.
Well, that's okay then.
It doesn't matter that these things have happened, because there's not very many of them.
You know, it's only a small number of them.
So what we have to do is basically give them all a pass.
Jurgers offer much more than speed and economy, he notes.
Whereas judges and murder cases can only punish, he can offer compensation.
Through his mediation, a woman whose husband and son were killed in a land dispute was paid $60,000.
Something with far more than practical benefit to her than a conviction.
Yeah, but do you not think punishing the criminal with, oh, I don't know, I mean, a criminal conviction might be good.
Might be a useful thing?
Maybe having a record of that man being a murderer in the official state bureaucracy?
So other people can see that this person is a murderer?
Perhaps lock them up so they don't murder someone else in future?
Oh, but they'll have to pay money.
Yeah, but maybe they're okay with that.
Maybe they don't care.
Maybe they're just going to sit there and default on their payments because they're fucking murderers.
What am I going to hold him to his honor?
But like, well, yeah, you may kill people because you're pissed off with them, but you did say you were going to give me some money this month.
So pay up.
When a group of businessmen embroiled in a commercial dispute start to shout at one another, he snaps, this is not a mall or a court or a police station.
It is a jurger.
So behave yourselves.
In 2016, a report commissioned by Britain's Department for International Development advocating studying the merits of Jurgers.
Accordingly, DFID has recently funded gender sensitivity training for tribal elders in Peshawar, a northern conservative city.
But activists for women's rights tend to snort at such moves.
Yeah, I'm doing that.
Because I'm actually an activist for women's rights as much as I am for men's rights.
I'm an activist for human rights.
British colonialists points out Nazi Brohi, a researcher, also tried to preserve jurgers while eliminating the most abhorrent practices.
But threats to banish those guilty of honor killings merely led to a spike in the number of violent deaths labelled suicides.
Naturally, lawyers aren't happy about the mainstreaming of jurgers, but that's because they don't need lawyers in a jurger.
Because why would you?
But to be honest with you, and I can't believe I'm going to say this, I'm actually with the lawyers on this case.
Rather than indulging mobs of senescent villagers, another suggests, the government should give authority to resolve petty disputes to Nazims, the lowliest of elected officials.
Yeah, that's a good idea, because they're at least elected.
You get to choose the people dispensing justice over you and making your laws.
You know, democracy, it used to be a really good thing.
But instead of the solutions that are being suggested by educated professionals who aren't living in a backwards tribe somewhere, Pakistan is on the verge of cementing into law a tribal code that considers the term property to include women.
It's so progressive.
I just, I'm laughing because it's ridiculous.
This sounds like something out of a different century to me.
It's absolutely insane.
And I hear very little from Western left-wing feminist types.
But that's probably because they're currently consumed with male feminists turning out to be a fifth column of rapists and harassers within their midst.
But a video on that coming next week.
Since we're on the subject of the progressive nature of Islam, Swedish politicians have called for the army to be deployed to no-go zones to keep the peace.
That's lovely that you have no-go zones that you need the army to keep the peace in.
So 20 members of the moderate party in Sweden have proposed the government deploys armed forces in some of the country's most dangerous no-go zones to combat gang violence.
Moderate party politician Mikhail Siederbrat made the proposal this week saying the situation in our areas of exclusion has deteriorated.
The gangs have taken over and the police have had to retreat.
Swedish law no longer applies there.
Well that's okay, they'll just set up a jerker, it'll be fine.
Siederbrat was backed up by 19 other moderate party members who signed a motion to deploy members of the Swedish armed forces in the heavily migrant populated Stockholm suburbs of Hollanda, Norsberg, Tenster, Rinkaby and Husby.
It is absolutely necessary to do something because these gangs are like cancerous tumours in our country and it is urgent.
Wow, that's really Islamophobic.
My absolute belief is that we, the nation of Sweden, must declare war on criminal gangs.
It is the responsibility of the state to maintain the law, especially the police, but the police today do not have the numerical ability to maintain public order.
Holy shit.
How bad is it in Sweden?
In certain no-go zones, police have been brutally attacked, some of which has even been caught on video.
That's police body cam footage.
You can watch it if you want.
It's gangs of Muslim thugs in Rinkaby and various other places like that attacking cops.
This does appear to be a Swedish publication that does appear to be publishing this, and it does appear to be that it is, as they say through the Google translation, it's too dangerous in an area of Rinkobe to build a police station that would make it less dangerous.
It is far too dangerous to build a police station in the area, say several police officers who want to be anonymous because, you know, you don't lose your job being a racist.
It has to be watched around the clock.
It is both the risk of robbery and the threat to staff who will work on the building.
So it's really no wonder that they literally want to put it under military occupation and have the military take on police functions in the area.
For example, a police bus and a night in Norsberg could be manned by four to five soldiers led by a police inspector.
That's great, you've actually got to put soldiers on the streets of Swedish cities to control Muslim gangs because the police can't.
Where does this end?
Do you think this gets better or worse?
The situation for Swedish police has become dire with the Swedish National Police Commissioner Dan Eliason begging for help from the government earlier this year.
Let's see what he was saying.
So again, I went to the original source on this and yeah, he does appear to be saying, help us, help us.
5,000 criminals divided into 200 networks in 61 exposed areas.
He's appealing to other social actors.
So Dan Eliasson says, no, we are a country not at a pain limit, but we are in a situation where we should not be.
If the social contract is to keep and people want to pay taxes and participate in society, then do not let it go further, but we have to reverse the trend.
Because it's getting worse.
Apparently, though, there is lights at the end of the tunnel.
By the end of 2018, we will be more policemen, but it depends a lot on what the government is willing to provide in terms of new resources.
We heard the Interior Minister talk about 10,000 new police officers.
Fucking hell, man.
This is just like, I want to make a glib comment, but holy shit, this isn't funny.
And do you know what else isn't funny?
A transgender woman was raped and set on fire.
The LGBTQ community is demanding justice.
Oh, that's fabulous.
Finally, Western feminists are doing something about people who are actually suffering, and they aren't whinging about tweets.
Oh, wait.
No, they're not.
These are feminist activists and whatnot in Istanbul, where this took place.
Hand Kada was a beloved member of the LGBT community in Turkey, but her status and lifestyle made many people think of her in a negative light.
I wonder why.
The transgender woman worked as a sex worker in Istanbul.
She died earlier this month at the age of 23.
She was raped, mutilated, and burned to death by a hate group.
And what were they chanting?
Now the LGBT community is hoping justice.
I don't mean to laugh.
It's not funny that this is happening, right?
But what's funny is the deafening silence from Western feminists.
It's ridiculous.
Literally, we're going to get on to the next article and you'll be like, wow, this is petty shit in comparison to what is actually going on and people who actually need help.
So the LBGT community in Turkey faces some of the harshest treatment from the conservative attitude the country has against them.
But don't worry, they'll have that here.
I mean, do they do progressives think that the religious, right-wing conservative values of Islam will just be melted away?
And this is exactly my point.
While the LGBT community had only themselves to rely on for support in the past, Hyundai's death has inspired famous Turkish figures to raise awareness about the atrocities the community faces.
Yeah, you would think there would be some kind of international solidarity, but feminists are too busy whining about Twitter.
Anita Sarkisian, it's frustrating to be known as the woman who survived Gamergate.
Yeah, I can imagine it would be.
It must be really goddamn frustrating considered literally everyone survived Gamergate.
So I don't know why people would even call you a Gamergate survivor.
It seems to be the most asining and pointless label anyone can imagine.
Do you know what I am?
I'm a tea-making survivor.
Yes, so are you, incidentally?
I mean, you just can't talk this up enough, can you, Guardian?
It's been five years since the feminist critic and blogger Anita Sarkesian became the target for a staggeringly vicious online hate campaign.
You know that a trans person was just burned to death after being raped and mutilated in Turkey.
You know that women are actually being raped because someone raped as someone else's punishment.
Do you not hear how fucking pathetic you sound?
Get over it.
That's it.
Get over it.
They're fucking tweets.
If you don't like it, stop being a bigot online and people won't send you tweets.
So apparently the games industry is still unfriendly to its non-fictional women.
At the European Women in Games conference in London last month, they're not exactly going to turn up and go, you know what, everything's great for women.
Yeah, yeah, we're all happy.
Good, I'm glad we're all happy.
What now?
What have we got to complain about?
Nothing.
Anyway, several women told Sarkeesian that seeing her persevere showed them that they could too, which she finds upsetting.
You know, there are loads of women in the game industry.
Very few of them receive any kind of backlash online.
And that's because very few of them are outspoken bigots.
People don't like bigotry.
That's just what the problem you're experiencing is.
And it happens to literally everyone.
You know that men receive more harassment than women, don't you?
But you don't care.
You know that half of harassment comes from women, don't you?
But you don't care.
You just don't care about these things.
And you never will because they don't fit your narrative.
But anyway, she says, it's frustrating to be known as the woman who survives harassment.
It's not a thing I think I'll ever get away from.
Well, no, considering you made it the centerpiece of your entire career, why would it be?
That's no one talks about your game reviews as if they're good game reviews, Anita.
You know, everyone talks about your reviews as if they're total shit.
Which is why you can barely break 40,000 views a video now.
No one cares about your opinion on games.
No one cares about your opinion on culture.
What they care about is having a poor, weak woman who needs protection from the strong male feminists, only to find herself needing protection from the strong male feminists.
But hey, we all know how that goes.
And again, I told you, the video is coming.
It's going to be good.
But you know what?
not wasting any more of my time or your time on any Sarkeesian.
Especially when Robert Mugabe has been appointed the World Health Organization's Goodwill Ambassador.
Which, just, why him?
Why?
Fucking how?
How did this happen?
So Mugabe was chosen as the World Health Organization's Goodwill Ambassador, and that's been criticized by several organisations, including the British government.
Yeah, can we start criticising Jogers next?
It's sorry, I fucking hate these Jogers.
Honestly, I find them genuinely disgusting.
The idea that people can literally just get around and meet out tribal justice that involves rapes.
Just, no.
No.
Come on.
And I really wish feminists would talk about it.
And you know why I have to wish feminists would do it?
Because literally, I'm a white man and they won't listen to me.
They literally won't care because I won't give them a big-eyed sob story.
I'll make a principled argument that makes sense.
And they'll say, yeah, but I don't want to listen.
If it doesn't engage their feels, they don't give a fuck.
So the British government described his selection as surprising and disappointing.
Given his country's rights record.
You know, his country's rights record.
Give him fucking his personal rights record.
Right, okay.
So you've got UK, I mean, we were downplaying the killings in Zimbabwe to guard our interests apparently back in the 80s.
Massacre of thousands by Mugabe, obviously not him personally, but he ordered it.
And then you can come back to modern day, where he's literally like, we're not going to prosecute the killers of white farmers because we're black Marxist pan-African nationalists and fuck whitey.
I mean, listen to this.
Just, I mean, I'm not overplaying this either, right?
Yes, we have killed those who were killed when they resisted.
They will never prosecute those who killed them.
I ask, why should we arrest them?
Oh, I don't know, because they were murdering people for their property?
Even if they weren't murdering for property, I mean, why would you even think, why should we arrest them?
Because they're murderers.
Is murder not a crime in Zimbabwe?
After he suffered his first electoral defeat at the 2000 referendum, Mugabe unleashed his personal militia, the self-styled war veterans, used violence and murder as an electoral strategy.
Yeah, there's a reason why we call him a dictator, isn't there?
A murderous dictator.
A murderous socialist dictator.
Which is something that not many people tend to want to talk about with Mugabe, and I don't know why.
Because it's socialism that's making him seize white-owned farms and murder the occupants.
It's socialism that gives him the by any means necessary attitude.
But anyway, from, you know, brutal dictator to woman complaining that liberal men think they know feminism, but they really don't.
This is one of the greatest articles to demonstrate that feminism is a religion.
So now that our culture finally decided to take violence against some women somewhat seriously, conversations that have long happened in hushed tones are taking place in the open.
In recent weeks, men throughout so-called enlightened liberal industries have been brought down by allegations of harassment and sexual assault.
The only thing that's surprising is how many of the men who have long abused their powers have gotten away with it in part by hiding behind a sheen of progressive politics and claims of feminism.
Yeah, I think most of them, actually, at this point.
I mean, can you point me to a male feminist who actually isn't a piece of shit?
Who's someone who isn't lying?
Someone who isn't harassing, someone who isn't slandering, some defaming.
That's an honest question.
I want to meet a male feminist who isn't a piece of shit.
Harvey Weinstein, again video soon, champions female directors.
So how bad can he truly be?
Exactly.
Exactly.
You think because he champions female directors, there are definitely going to be people who go, oh, I must be a feminist.
I mean, he was with her after all.
And this is the thing.
These people that you're talking about here, the Harvey Weinsteins of the world.
They're not ideologues.
They're disgusting lechers that are hiding behind them.
They're criminals.
They're people who are just intolerable in every way possible.
And you tolerate them because they parrot feminist talking points at you.
That's something you really should think about.
Writers at leftist publications who have written about women's issues and self-identify as feminists now stand accused of assault and rape.
In public, they call themselves our allies, and in private, they reveal their true selves.
Dun dun dun.
I can't believe it.
The male feminist turned out to be a piece of shit.
And this is the thing.
You can't be a real feminist.
You know that, right?
You're a male feminist ally.
You're not actually a feminist.
The fact that we don't call them female feminists should really tell you something.
You are not welcome in feminism.
It's gross.
It's racist.
You're a white man.
You're a male ally.
You're not a feminist.
You can't be a feminist because you're a male ally.
And you're probably white as well, so, you know, shut your fucking mouth.
The alt-right, filled with men who identify as alpha or beta.
Oh, God.
call them cucks, meaning they're so far down on the scale of hierarchical masculinity, they fall below women.
That's quite an amusing way of putting it.
Maybe that's true.
I don't think the alt-right actually see women on the scale of masculinity.
Maybe that's just, I don't know.
If anyone's in the alt-right and you're watching this, do tell me in the comments.
I want to know if women fall on the hierarchical masculinity scale for you.
Which, I mean, I would suggest is rather counterintuitive.
On the left, there was such a widespread understanding that men who self-identify as feminists were mostly doing it to get laid, that even Saturday Night Live has done a skit about it.
Then why the hell do you tolerate them?
Flip over the tables.
Chase out the male feminist money changers from your holy temple of feminism.
But that's not the end of the religious metaphors.
They were performing as sensitive allies, but this was just to hide a darker truth.
This is what you get with collectivism, by the way.
If you're a male feminist, this is you now.
You are now lumped into this.
Now it's a darker truth, that men have not encountered feminism at all.
So now it's all of you, because you're a bunch of collectivists, and you've chosen this.
This is the future you chose.
And you know what?
Listen and believe has really come back to bite you in the ass here, hasn't it?
Because there haven't been very many convictions.
But yeah, all of this, or at least most of this, is all down to hearsay and allegation and it's not been proven.
But you can't say that the victim isn't telling the truth as part of your own ideology.
You have disarmed yourselves.
You have no defense.
And there is no apology good enough.
The thing is, this is a rod you made for your own backs as well.
You made this bed, now you've got a lie in it.
And suddenly, boom.
Did you think they were going to stick up for you?
Sure, they took a class in their liberal arts college, but they think it's terrible what women have to go through with cat calling, the unfair beauty standards, you know, the real problems.
And they absolutely think it's unfair that some conservative Christian politician could deny a woman access to an abortion.
They believe all right things when it comes to women's issues, but they still treat women as if they were objects that are only there for their sexual use.
The power imbalance between the genders is built in from birth, and our cultural values, strengths and power over empathy and softness, are transmitted through everything from entertainment to the news to our political structure.
So what you need to do is get woke.
It's one thing to perform respect out in public.
It's another to fully understand, both consciously and unconsciously, that when you're alone with a woman, she is a human with her own valid needs and desires.
Alcohol and sexual desire is a way of bringing our unconscious beliefs out from under this thin veil of civility, showing us parts of ourselves we didn't even know were there.
And here we have it.
Feminism should be a spiritual awakening for men.
It should be a revelation of the ways that they have participated in the oppression of women in both public and private spheres.
You know, the ways that you have sinned against God is what they are saying.
It should show them the parts of themselves, their own feminine nature, their capacity for compassion and vulnerability they have dismissed as mere weakness that need to be reclaimed.
It is a psychological, even a spiritual project, not merely a political one, which I think explains the religious nature of the Atheism Plus community.
Until it is, feminism might as well not exist for men.
You're just a sinner.
The reports of harassment and assault will continue to roll in, and up-and-coming predatory men will replace the fallen predatory men.
And men will continue to be surprised to discover that under their feminist t-shirt beats the heart of a predator.
Export Selection