Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Existential Corrections

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Nov. 8, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

06:44

Existential Corrections

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	I was forwarded a viral tweet by a website called Existential Comics.
	Existential Comics is a philosophy-based comedy website satirizing interesting philosophers from history.
	The webcomic is run by Corey Moeller, and his comics are often quite nuanced and intellectually stimulating, which is what made this comic so surprising.
	Corey says, there has been a lot of confusion about the difference between fascists and anti-fascists, so I've made this handy chart.
	The chart in question is a defense of antifar and is quite intellectually dishonest if I'm being charitable.
	And I have few reasons to be charitable.
	Now I know Cory will presumably deflect this criticism by saying Just a meme.
	But satire is a form of political commentary, designed not only to ridicule, but also critique.
	When I see a critique this biased in favour of one side over another, I am compelled to address the failings in the argument, because this comic was incredibly biased.
	Let's start at the beginning.
	The flags.
	Being generous, one could call the alt-right fascists, despite any lack of coherent economic doctrine emanating from within it, and when paired with anti-fascists, it becomes a natural choice.
	However, it makes the anti-fascists sound ideologically neutral, which they are most certainly not.
	We have replaced you strong united interracial groups.
	A.C. is all up to the wall.
	The alt-right might be fascists, but they are not actually Nazis.
	Although you will find the odd Nazi flag or Hitler salute at a speech or rally, but most commonly, you won't.
	The anti-fascists have the Antifar flag, which is actually more like a battle flag for a side, and not a symbol of a normative declaration of ideology.
	But they do have a large range of extremely strong ideological convictions.
	All of these align on certain important principles, an opposition to hierarchy in the state, capitalism, and by extension, any agents of the state, and any perceived corollary hierarchies, such as in gender, race, sexuality, etc.
	Anti-Far members want to end private property to erase class distinctions and live in a stateless, borderless society.
	They can be described with a high degree of accuracy as desiring Marx's proposed end state of communism.
	Corey knows this, and he knows this is why you see the occasional Soviet flag at antifar rallies in the same way one sees the occasional Nazi flag at alt-right rallies.
	The only difference is that Corey seems to be sympathetic to Antifar's ideological goals, which he knows are generally reviled by the wider public, and this is obscured by calling them anti-fascists.
	Communists are as bad as fascists, in every way relevant to a liberal or conservative ideological perspective.
	Corey continues this deliberate imbalance with the first category, stated political goal.
	The alt-right do indeed wants to establish a white ethnostate, and Antifar do indeed not want to do that, but that's not one of their political goals.
	Antifar want a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat to overthrow bourgeois society, seize control of the government and usher in their version of the communist utopia, regardless of the cost, which leads us to point two.
	The alt-right probably are willing to use violence for political purposes, but so far most violence instigated at protests comes from Antifar themselves, and is directed indiscriminately towards quote-unquote fascists who are arbitrarily assigned in the heat of the moment.
	So when Corey says that yes, Antifar are willing to use violence in order to stop the fascists, what he means is simply yes.
	The question of what to do with minorities inevitably comes down to segregation for both sides, with the alt-right actively oppressing minorities and the alt-left seeking to separate them into non-white safe spaces for their own good because of the innate oppressive nature of white people.
	Both of these sides boil down to privilege for one racial group or the other.
	Free speech?
	Absolutely not.
	For both sides.
	Again, Corey's special pleading in Antifar's favor that they only want to end free speech for Nazis is absurd.
	Not only is that flat out untrue, as we've seen Antifar protests and rights shut down people who are not Nazis.
	So, with 10 weeks advance, the College Republicans and Young America's Foundation let Berkeley know that they wanted me to come on September 14th.
	So, I spoke, by the way, at Berkeley last year.
	No problem.
	We did it with like three weeks in advance, no protesters, nothing.
	What we've been seeing at Berkeley particularly is outside agitators Antifa and the Heckler's Veto, which is a bunch of rioters basically coming in, creating a security threat, and then the administration using that as an excuse not to hold the event, saying that it costs too much money to stop all of this.
	We don't want to be arresting students.
	They did this with Milo Yiannopoulos.
	They did this obviously earlier this year with Ann Colser.
	And that's a pretty dangerous proceeding.
	When you start canceling events because you're afraid of the security cost, all that's doing is really incentivizing people to get violent if they want to shut other folks down.
	But as already covered, the flexibility of the term Nazi when used by Antifar means it is applicable to almost any dissenter imaginable.
	And when it comes to the question of what will happen to the dissenters, Corey is surprisingly generous to the fascists when he thinks the fascists will jail them for being unpatriotic.
	At this point, he isn't even trying to argue Antifar's case, however, and leaves the question unanswered by simply repeating the credo, We just don't want the Nazis to come back, you guys, but fails to include the qualifier, by any means necessary, and certainly avoids letting people know that liberals get the bullets too.
	When it comes to the Jewish question, he accurately notes that the Nazis won't tolerate Jews, but fails to observe that the Jews disproportionately make up the capitalist owner class that Antifa are looking to execute.
	And so it should come as no surprise that both sides end up using a red and black flag, because both sides embody the exact same set of principles.
	Red for socialism, black for totalitarianism.
	The only principle on which the fascists and anti-fascists really differ is on the question of nationalism.
	The fascists are in favor, the anti-fascists are against.
	Otherwise, they are both oppressive collectivist ideologies that operate through groupthink with a historical track record that puts them in competition only with each other and the black death as the worst things to have ever happened to mankind.
	Corey knows all of this.
	So why did he create propaganda in favor of a violent domestic terrorist movement?

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