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Nov. 5, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
30:44
This Week in Stupid (05⧸11⧸2017)
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Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 5th of November 2017 and congratulations 4chan, you've done it again.
It's okay to be white signs and stickers appear on campuses and streets across the country and holy shit, this is problematic.
Posters proclaiming it's okay to be white have been appearing on college campuses and on city streets across the country this week, prompted by an anonymous chat room comment that suggested that the message would feed social unrest and sway white Americans to far-right ideologies.
Since Tuesday, the posters have been spotted in a whole bunch of universities.
This is a truly viral thing that 4chan has spawned here.
I'm actually genuinely surprised at just how much reach they have.
The poster campaign, as far as I'm aware, happened in Canada, America, and England.
And really the best bit about it was the absolute baffling way that the progressives reacted to it, but we'll get to that shortly.
So a series of messages said that people should print signs saying it's okay to be white, post them on college campuses and elsewhere, then stand back and watch the fun begin.
And that's exactly what happened.
The thing is, right?
I recognize a carefully worded, provocative troll post when I see one, because I tend to do them myself.
And saying it's okay to be white to progressives is a very interesting trap to lay.
Because literally, that's not a racist statement.
There is literally nothing wrong with saying it's okay to be white.
And it's actually really difficult to argue against it, even if this is put up by a neo-Nazi.
It's still a true statement, and they have actually done nothing wrong by saying this in public.
Or so you would think.
News reports would draw attention to the protesters that the writer behind the idea predicted.
And he was right.
Then white Americans derisively referred to normies in the white nationalist ecosphere that will discover that American journalists and lefties hate white people.
Because they do.
I mean, literally they do.
They hate the concept of whiteness.
They believe it's toxic, oppressive, colonialist, imperialist, and capitalist.
All things they personally despise.
So yes, they do hate white people.
And they hate being white.
When German-descended American woman Rachel Dolzel said, actually, I'm black, well, it wasn't long before a lot of other white people were like, you know what?
Sometimes I don't want to be white either.
Because white people are inherently oppressive.
I feel guilty for being white.
The episode is indicative of the efforts white nationalist groups have made to recruit in and around the nation's college campuses and other mainstream settings with the claims of growing white maltreatment and expanding anti-white discrimination.
Because there fucking is.
You don't have to look far on Twitter to find verified lefties literally complaining that say white people having children is perpetuating white supremacy and really you shouldn't.
I mean it's not like we don't have Ivy League professors saying things like I chose not to have children because they'd be white and whiteness is bad.
Whiteness is something to be avoided.
Being white is a negative thing inherently.
And you wonder why do they feel discriminated against?
What are you talking about?
We've only been bitching and moaning about white people on a daily fucking basis with people who are full-time professional activists trying to dismantle whiteness.
Is it any wonder that the majority of white Americans feel that they face discrimination on the basis of their race?
Why do you think that is?
But don't worry white people, it's alright.
We can't be racist to white people.
So how about you take that white fragility, dry those white tears and go back to your plantation?
And it's not like it's just on social media.
And it's not like it's just in the newspapers.
How about say the white DNC chair candidate, my job will be to shut other white people down.
Holy fucking shit, is she serious?
Why isn't she shutting herself down?
It's no great surprise that the Trump administration wants to investigate race-based discrimination against white college applicants because it seems that there's an awful lot of race-based discrimination against white college applicants.
In other news, Black women have become the most educated group in the United States.
How did this happen?
Oh, I don't know.
I have no idea.
No fucking clue how this could have happened.
But what about the cops?
But what about the cops?
Yeah, let's slow down there.
Let's slow down, Skippy.
Okay, because apparently in a controversial study reported on by the Washington Post, known alt-right website, police are more likely to shoot whites than blacks.
But you know what?
Black lives matter.
Black lives matter, no, fuck all lives matter.
That's racist.
And it's not like the media isn't fucking saturated with anti-white propaganda.
White people 101.
MTV's documentary points out some facts about race that might seem obvious until you realize for many Americans they're not.
Oh, go on, Jose Antonio Vargas.
Tell me about the problem with white people.
Oh, what's wrong, bro flakes?
What's wrong with MTV and Netflix and the rest of the media denigrating white people?
What's wrong with that?
What are you?
A racist?
Don't you know you can't be racist against white people?
Holy shit, you're such a bigot.
What's that?
Google seems to be actually promoting the claim that it's not possible for minorities to be racist against white people.
Imagine my shock.
It's all because white people just act white.
That's the problem that we're having here.
If you just stop acting white, then this will all be fine.
What you need to do is unlearn whiteness.
You need to rethink these race issues in music education somehow.
Because it's all this toxic whiteness that's causing the problem.
And by the way, if whiteness can't be unlearned, then black oppression is permanent.
You know, despite the black president, despite the fact that black women are the most educated group, despite the fact that white people are more likely to be shot by cops than black, and various other factors that mean that white people are facing, actively facing institutional discrimination in both the United States, in Canada, and in the UK.
But don't worry.
So it's definitely not a form of oppression when the BBC literally bans white people from applying for a fucking job.
It's literally not, because you know what?
Everyone's racist.
Everyone's racist, but racism by white people matters more.
Do you start to get the impression that maybe, just maybe, the Trump supporters might have a fucking point?
I am not in any way surprised that Trump supporters are feeling like white people are under attack because it really looks like white people are under attack.
But the white victim construct is one that experts say not so long ago only had traction in avowed white supremacists, segregationists, and neo-Nazi circles.
But today, it animates open and anonymous public discussions of race and shapes the nation's politics.
I wonder fucking why.
I wonder why.
I can't imagine why the left literally for the last five years doing nothing but attacking white people and men and the worst kinds of all, white men, and that's somehow having a knock-on effect.
I just can't believe the majority of people in the country aren't looking at this and going, well, yeah, you know what, white people are the problem.
It's completely fair for you to do all of this against white people because basically white people are slave owners.
They're neo-colonialists.
They're totally awful.
There is something just wrong with white people and it will be a good thing when white people are gone.
This is not some kind of alt-right talking point.
This is a left-wing talking point and they won't fucking shut up about it.
That's the problem that everyone has with the fucking left.
They are incredibly racist, sexist, gender-orientist, whatever else you want to call them.
They are literally all these things and they use them as forms of attack against individuals who have literally done nothing wrong other than exist as the wrong race, gender, or sexuality.
It has to stop.
In the period just after the 2016 election, investigators with the Southern Poverty Law Center, don't even get me motherfucking started, documented a search in posters and recruitment activity by white nationalist organizations on 150 college and campus universities.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they did.
Yeah, they are.
They are literally doing this.
And they're doing this because you are constantly attacking white people.
And so they literally feel that this is fair game because, like I keep saying, you're laying the table.
You're setting all the chairs.
You're saying, right, here's Hispanics, here's blacks, here's whatever, Latinx, and the white chair is empty.
And you're complaining that there are people who want to sit in that chair and calling them names for doing exactly what you are doing.
If you don't want them doing it, maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't be doing it either.
Because the thing is wrong in principle.
You are not justified in attacking white people, no matter how many times you tell yourselves you can't be racist to white people.
The Washington Post can't even get through a single article without literally attacking white people.
For those who are already worried about what they view as the unacceptable price of equality, an end to white control, the country's decision to elect its first black president was a chilling moment.
No one, no one outside of the far left views it as an end to white control.
An amazing number of people voted for both Obama and Trump because they weren't voting for the race of the person and they weren't thinking in terms of the racial control of the United States.
Unlike the far left who think almost exclusively in those terms.
But these Americans' perceptions that equity is effectively anti-white discrimination appear to have been adopted by a bigger proportion of the white American population.
Well, maybe, just fucking maybe, that's how it really looks to these people.
I mean, do you want me to go over the list of sources I quickly assembled?
It took me five minutes to draw these sources together because I have seen so much of this crap over the years that I have been covering this.
Whites inside various supremacist groups and movements believe and have for a long time that they are part of a victimized racial group.
I don't care what people in fringe lunatic white supremacist groups think.
What I care is what the average person thinks.
And the average white person in America literally thinks that white people are under attack in America.
No fucking wonder the white nationalist groups are growing.
And don't you think it might be more sensible to stop with the anti-white rhetoric if you don't want to continue to watch them grow?
If you want to see these white nationalist groups shrink and wither away to nothing, then what you have to do is make sure white people aren't being condemned for being white people.
To me, this is like something remedial you would say to a child.
It's like something obvious.
It's like, look, if I sit there and go, you know what, women are the problem, women are the problem.
You know, if every other outlet was like, yeah, yeah, you know, women are the problem.
Women are the problem.
Women, women, women, women, women, women everywhere, all the time for about three or four years.
Do you think women might go, you know, I think, I think we're being discriminated against?
I think there's this societal zeitgeist against us, and we have a problem with that.
But of course, you're not going to see that because women are a protected class.
But white people and men are certainly not.
They're fair game, aren't they?
Let's be honest.
It's okay to go for them.
Because, oh, look at look at all the power they have.
Even those poor ones.
Look at the unemployed white people with so much power.
The sense that white Americans have become the lone group in America unable to attend group interests shows up in those 4chan chat threads and Twitter timelines too.
Yeah, but that's because it's literally true, isn't it?
It's literally true.
I mean, I don't like the alt-right, but really all they are is the group of people who want to participate in identity politics, and you're preventing them on the basis that they're white.
You literally have identity politics for every other fucking group, an interest group for every other single race and special snowflake fucking identity, and white people are not allowed one.
That is, in and of itself, discrimination against white people.
It's a way of advantaging some at the expense of others, and you're doing this on the basis of race.
I don't think we should advantage anyone on the basis of their race.
I say get rid of all of these racial interest groups.
This is my favorite bit, though.
The factual basis for claims that white Americans are collectively suffering is difficult to find.
Oh, really?
On average, they continue.
Oh, hell of a, on average.
On average.
They continue to enjoy better income, personal welfare health, healthcare, housing, schools than any other group.
Bullshit.
And that is actually something that goes to East Asians, followed by Jews, incidentally.
But white Americans, oh, they're the problem.
They're the ones on average doing great.
Yeah, okay, well, let's actually decentralize this a bit.
So if we go outside of the cities, let's say to, oh, I don't know, the Rust Belt, how's it looking there for white Americans?
Are they doing well?
They've got personal wealth reserves, do they?
They've got better income than the cities, do they?
They've got great housing, healthcare, and schools, do they?
No, they fucking don't.
But you think because you have a group of people in cities who are doing very well, then that means the people outside of the cities must be doing well also, and that's not true.
So Concordia Colleges, one of the campuses where the it's okay to be white placards and stickers were found, removed them.
The officials said they did so because the signs did not adhere to campus display policies.
Don't know what their campus display policies are, but okay, at least they're not complaining that these posters are racist.
Because if there's one thing that these posters are not, it's racist.
Concordia president William Craft said he wanted to invite the campus community to discuss the posters at a public forum at the school will organize.
He also pointed out that the posters were distinguished, among other things, for a lack of information, even the name of the group behind them.
Because there wasn't really a group behind them.
Anyone can post on 4chan.
Anyone can read something posted on 4chan.
And anyone can participate in a political social movement, which is what they have literally created here.
And on Wednesday, he posted a longer statement to the school's Facebook page.
There is and must be a place here for people of different ethnicities and skin colours, of different faith traditions or no faith traditions of different nations, gender identities, political convictions.
These posters in no way contradict that.
In fact, these posters actually support that statement.
And part of people of different ethnicities, skin colours, etc. is white people.
So the diversity crowd have to find it within themselves to say it's okay to be white.
Because if they can't, they are implicitly saying where they are not explicitly saying that it is not okay to be white.
And that is a real problem.
Because holy shit, do you think this is a road that does not have a dark destination?
This ends in a bad place.
And I really don't want to see Western societies going down this road.
I have been saying this for years.
The left needs to stop racializing everything.
It really has to.
And until it does, this is just going to keep getting worse.
And he completely agrees with me when he says, in that sense, it is indeed okay to be white.
You say it's okay to be white, so I want to put up this poster that just says it's okay to be white.
And, you know, people can put up posters saying it's okay to be brown or black or Christian, Muslim, straight, gay, whatever.
Let's just have this all out and see the bigots who don't think it is for what they are.
And some of the most interesting reporting on this has come from the local college newspapers themselves.
Given how they are the fountainhead of all of this, and I'm going to call it what it is, anti-white propaganda.
In fact, it's worse than that.
It's anti-Western propaganda.
So someone called Tony Kay took a photograph of the Saskatoon poster, then took it down and threw it into a nearby trash bin.
He called his wife, who said it was terrible.
Someone later asked him for a photo of this and he shared it online.
He considers the posters a kind of trickery.
The slogan's appearance as part of a current coordinated attempt by white supremacists, you don't know that, to hijack Canada's foundational liberal democratic belief in equality, human rights and multiculturalism to gain support from the majority population of Canadian life who doesn't see how structural inequalities or basic imperial history has shaped the Western world, even into our little corner of supposedly peaceful and polite Canada.
He literally thinks someone saying it's not wrong to be white is an attack and a way of hijacking liberal democratic beliefs in equality.
That tells you everything you need to know about what he thinks about the position of white people and non-white people in Canada.
He is a white supremacist with a guilty conscience.
Racism is a slow-moving beast, he said, adding that in today's world, these sorts of things tend to happen on the internet, but it was disturbing to see it brought into the real world.
If putting it up as an act of propaganda, then taking it down as an equal step, he said, I guess I can only hope to keep doing the right thing.
And here's another one.
A senior called Micah Ferdinand said, I was really shocked that someone had the guts to do this, because we try to promote diversity so much, and seeing this is saying, hey, we still have students who aren't fully invested in this diversity message.
And so to say it's okay to be white is to be anti-diversity in Micah Ferdinand's estimation.
That's what they mean when they say diversity.
The alt-right are right on this one point.
There is no diversity that includes white people.
It is racially exclusionary to white people.
I do not approve of being racially exclusionary.
Therefore, I must oppose their ideological construct that is diversity.
And in fact, I will give you a fantastic example of how they demonstrate that the word diversity does not mean diversity.
It is actually simply anti-white.
Diverse photo shoot sends powerful message.
Never be sorry for being black.
There is no diversity in this photo shoot.
There are eight black women in underwear.
This is a monoracial photo shoot.
There is a monogender photo shoot.
And presumably a monosexuality photo shoot.
These are just eight black women and I have no problem with that.
They can pose in their underwear all day for all I give a fuck.
But don't call this diverse because it's not.
This is the antithesis of diversity.
It is a mono-racial, mono-gendered photo shoot.
It is not diverse.
When they say they want diversity, they are lying.
Going back to Moorhead, some have decried the posters as racist.
The same thing happened at Harvard, which was reported on by their student magazine, The Harvard Crimson.
More than a dozen handmade stickers reading it's okay to be white surfaced around Harvard Square Wednesday, prompting Cambridge officials to remove them and a Harvard Law School dean to announce the signs as provocations intended to divide us.
How?
How could it possibly divide us?
If it's okay to be white, as you will literally give lip service to, how could saying it's okay to be white divide you?
Unless there are people within your movement who literally do not believe it is okay to be white.
You haven't thought that through.
Harvard Law School will not let this happen here.
We live, work, teach, and learn together in a community that is stronger, better and deeper because of our diversity.
And because we encourage open, respectful, and constructive discourse.
But let me tell you about the problem with white people.
And it happened in the University of Iowa as well.
It's annoying, said University of Iowa student Jackson Smith.
I wish it wouldn't happen here in Iowa City.
I think we're better than that.
Something to do with neo-Nazi type recruitment, but they're not sure because they can't really identify anyone who's done this and it doesn't really seem to be actively recruiting people into white supremacy.
It seems to be that there are people in the United States, Canada and Britain who literally feel attacked on the basis of their race and they want it affirmed that it's not simply that being white is bad.
And it is provocative to say this to a progressive who has been indoctrinated, totally inculcated into believing that white people are history's great monsters and are the ones who have done all of the bad things whereas the non-white people have done all of the good things.
It's a sign of the times we live in that people feel the need to do this.
Yes, it is.
Yes, it absolutely is.
You are dividing people and then you will say, it's just sad that we really have to divide ourselves in this way and try to troll people by using race.
Motherfucker, you guys have been not even trolling.
Outright attacking people on the basis of their race.
And then when you're called racist, you go, no, we can't be racist.
So checkmate, we've redefined the word racism so that we're not racist.
So shut up, whitey.
Over to England now.
Engelfield Green residents slam it's okay to be white posters found around the village.
Zoe Karen Price, 22 from Engham, said she didn't agree with the message and argues the signs should be taken down immediately because she literally has failed to turn on her brain.
She hasn't thought about this at all.
This is her parroting indoctrination without even considering the context of any of this or the specific words being used.
She told Getzeri, it will just cause arguments.
If you have any race, you should be accepted as who you are, not where you are from or what you do.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
So it should be okay to say it's okay to be white.
She added, racism is a big thing nowadays.
We need to all stand together as one.
What's racist about this?
It's not a judgment on any other race.
It's not a commentary on any other race.
It is a commentary on how the left is attacking white people for being white.
Renan Mossman, who studies biology at Royal Holloway University, described the posters as meaningless.
People putting these up seem to be under the delusion that the world's out to get them because they are white.
The posters are an embarrassment to everyone.
It's an insult to real anti-discrimination movements.
Get fucked.
Get fucked.
Be insulted.
Be embarrassed.
I don't care.
I'm at the point now where I'm literally just tired of watching the left craft a neo-Nazi movement with every single word and action that they take.
Just stop it.
If people want to put up posters saying it's okay to be white, your move is to leave them alone.
Because it is okay to be white, as you personally will say, and therefore you have no reason to take these down unless you are part of some sort of political movement that actually doesn't agree that it's okay to be white and would actually like to see less white people.
And you know that you have activists that think that.
I love this one in particular.
MD High School won't fall victim to okay to be white flyers.
I love that we won't fall into your trap, 4chan.
But the thing is you already have because you're fucking retarded and you don't understand the sort of cultural waters that you're swimming in.
You don't seem to understand that like if someone says it's okay to be white, to you that's like a drop of oil.
You can't, oh no God, that's going against our diversity.
We can't, we can't have that up.
Yo, no, it is okay to be white.
I mean, you know, we're not against white people, but oh no, no, we've got to take these posters out.
do you see where they've got you by just just putting this up has made you react because in your minds it's unacceptable to say that it's not wrong to be white Even if you actually believe it's not wrong to be white.
In a letter sent to parents, the school's principal Renee Johnson writes, Montgomery Blair is a very smart, diverse, and inclusive community.
And we will not fall victim to attempts to divide us by accepting white people.
Literally, diversity means less white people.
That's actually what you mean when you say diversity.
And I don't like that that's the case.
It sounds like, you know, rabid alt-right propaganda, but holy shit, it's fucking true.
You people hate white people, and you know it.
And for example, you can find evidence of this on, say, a popular blog called Pathios.
Is it okay to be white?
I mean, have we actually asked the question?
Because I really think we should get into this.
And this is where we're going to start getting really woke.
Is it okay to be white?
Well, of course it's okay to be white.
What's not okay is to behave the way that many unself-aware white people behave towards people of color.
Because these behaviors result in harm ranging from mild irritation to loss of life in a police encounter.
Holy shit.
Every cliche.
But I love the projection.
It's not okay to behave in the way many unself-aware black people behave towards white people.
Ah, you don't like that, do you?
But that's also a true statement.
Not every white person exhibits these behaviors all of the time, but every white person exhibits these behaviors some of the time, don't they?
Some white people have their eyes open to racialized social dynamics to help them change their behavior.
Yes.
Yes, they do.
Some of them are guilty of feeling guilty, of thinking that white people are a homogenous group, that do all share some sort of racial destiny or something.
And amazingly, these people mostly reside on the left.
Most of them feel really guilty about this.
Most of them think this has been targeted behavior, that somehow white people were just supermen, better than everyone else.
And it was inevitable that they would end up conquering all the brown people because they're evil and just better than them.
And this just can't be changed, despite the thousands of years of history where brown people predated on white people.
But, you know, don't worry about it.
Don't think about it.
Shut up.
But some white people are indeed woke to how they can help brown people just because they're brown.
Some white people simply inhabit the world with enough humility, teachability, and empathy, and they're able to avoid being harmful without any explicitly racial consciousness.
Oh no, no, these people have an explicitly racial consciousness.
It's just negative.
We call it white guilt because that's really how it seems.
I love that Patheos is now going to start invoking Christian theology to understand this.
It's amazing.
How to understand that diversity is a cult?
Christianity asserts two paradoxically simultaneous truths about human nature.
On one hand, every human being is created in the image of God, which is an incredible claim that humanity essentially shares in God's divinity.
On the other hand, we believe that every human being is unavoidably corrupted by original sin.
It's the legacy of our ancestor sin that creates complex social and psychological toxicities in our communities.
We simply cannot opt out of inheriting.
Many white Christians say they believe in the doctrine of original sin in the abstract, but they're virulently resistant to the historicized application of original sin to the racial dynamics in our country.
If you don't believe in historically contextual variations of original sin, then you don't actually believe in original sin.
But to them, being white in America is original sin.
They literally describe it here.
They're virulently resistant to the historicized application of original sin to the racial dynamics in our country.
I wonder fucking why.
Because you are to condemn all white people as being inherently bad if you do that.
They go on to say that whiteness is a socialization by which a specific legacy of repressed guilt, entitlement, and defensiveness is inherited as an original sin that uniquely corrupts every white baby who was born into our American context.
Whiteness does not exist in the same social reality in any other culture.
Well, that's great.
That's good.
At least we now know that toxic whiteness is just a problem in America.
Whiteness as a toxic legacy is not okay.
So in that sense, being white is not okay.
Well, you've just described it as original sin.
So of course you're going to say that.
Or rather, every white person needs to be able to say, I'm not okay in order to be liberated from the shame and defensiveness that our ancestor's sin has bequeathed to us.
Listen very fucking carefully, dipshit.
I'm not responsible for something someone else did hundreds of years before I was born.
I'm not going to feel guilty about this.
You can't make me feel guilty about this because you literally have no case to make me feel guilty about this because I am literally not responsible for what has happened.
I don't know how else I can explain this.
I don't know why you would think that like there should be some racial guilt handed down to a certain group of people.
And here's where it really gets good.
So one of the tricky things about whiteness is that it's an identity formed by disavowing your own subjectivity and particularity.
White people are not a culture, we're just people in general.
And what you mean there is white people are individualistic, especially in Anglosphere countries that are based on the English tradition of being individualistic.
They are based on English liberalism.
That's why white people say, well, I'm not like, you know, I don't have a racial collectivist group that I want to be a part of because I'm an individualist.
Whether they even know the word individualism or not.
That's just how they think.
It's just the cultural milieu in which they have always been raised.
So they don't see themselves as a racial group with active racial interests.
But black people are always identified as black because they're a deviation from the norm of whiteness.
Unless, of course, they want to act white.
Unless they're a coon or an uncle Tom.
And then, oh, well, then they're just a race traitor because they're acting like an individual.
Because that's literally open to anyone.
Like, quote unquote, whiteness is really inclusive and really diverse.
It's literally open to anyone because whiteness is a synonym for individualism.
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