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Feb. 11, 2018 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
27:35
This Week in Stupid (11⧸02⧸2018)
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Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 11th of February 2018.
Before I get on with the video this week, I'd just like to tell you that I will be doing another live show, this time in the Scarborough Spa Grand Hall in Scarborough.
And it'll be taking place on Saturday, June the 16th, 2018.
I just want to give you a quick note about the live shows.
So I hope you'll have noticed of late that I've put a lot of work into the videos that I'm doing each week.
And that's why I've only been able to do like one video per week in addition to this one.
Because all of the research that goes into it takes a long time.
But I'm also doing a huge amount of reading.
And I'm saving the really good stuff for these live shows.
I think what I've got would be really good for a video, but I think in a live setting it would actually be even better.
And then what I'll do is record them and upload them so people can see what I'm doing.
They won't be this week in Stupids.
They'll be like a live video.
So hopefully they'll be interesting, fun, and well worth your time.
Because I realize that it's a hassle to go out of your way to actually come somewhere and actually do things and pay to get into a venue and all this sort of stuff.
So I really want to make it rewarding for people to do so.
And I think that I've got some really good stuff coming up.
I'm genuinely excited about it.
So I hope you'll join me.
The link will be in the description.
It's going to be good.
Let's talk about how Brexit poses the greatest modern day threat to women's rights and gender equality policies, according to researchers at the University of Surrey.
A study by the University of Surrey, University of Canterbury, New Zealand, investigated the potential impact of Brexit on gender equality in the UK.
So apparently academics from the Guildford Institution found that gender equality in the UK is potentially at risk following the country's withdrawal from the European Union as business interests have historically taken precedence over women's rights when negotiating terms with the EU.
I can't imagine how negotiations with the EU are going to in any way make us repeal women's rights.
By the way, business interests are really complaining that women are in the workplace, despite the fact that they can apparently pay them less for the same job.
And it doubles the number of people looking for jobs, which I think is rather favourable to the people who are actually hiring.
As in, they might be able to argue for better terms on their end because of the sheer number of applicants.
Silence on this issue during ongoing Brexit negotiations, which have mainly focused on trade and a recent vote against amendments to the European Withdrawal Bill aimed at safeguarding rights under the 2010 Equality Act has led researchers to the conclusion gender equality policies are likely to become watered down as a result.
Now, that's a very interesting statement, isn't it?
It's not that women's rights are under attack.
Women's rights in the UK, and I'm saying this with 100% confidence, are going to remain in exactly the same position as they were when we were in the EU.
We are not going to start attacking women's rights.
But gender equality policies are not women's rights.
Gender equality policies are, as I have been banging on recently, and I swear to God, I'm not going to be making any more gender pay gap videos.
But you have to understand just how much of a contemporary issue this is in the UK.
This is something that is happening in our media every single day, and the feminists are making out like bandits.
It's absolutely disgraceful.
I'm so sorry that I have to keep talking about it.
I thought it was an issue that was dead and gone, but apparently not.
It's recently burst like a boil, and it's all over the disgusting face of British politics.
And it's those policies that are going to be watered down as a result, which I am not sad about in the slightest, and it is completely unrelated to women's rights.
Additionally, the UK's restrained position on gender balance on corporate boards and a desire to avoid regulation in this area shows a preference to preserve the status quo within businesses, which is often discriminatory towards women.
Preserving the status quo within businesses means preserving the liberalist freedom of opportunity model, and that's a good thing.
Instead of implementing a socialist or vaguely communist set of directives that are going to force businesses to tailor their workplaces to suit feminists, not even to suit women, to suit feminist dogma, which is why they're describing this as often discriminatory to women, when what they actually mean is often discriminatory to choices that women do not, by and large, make.
It is discriminatory towards people who are not trying to become a CEO.
Professor Roberta Guerina, head of politics at the University of Surrey, said, Brexit poses the greatest modern day threat to women's rights and gender equality policies in the UK.
European legislation affords a degree of protection to women in the UK, but once we leave Europe, there is no guarantee that the same levels of protection will remain intact.
Women's reproductive rights are particularly vulnerable to attack.
As business production remains more valued than reproduction, interests of business are likely to trump other fundamental principles such as equality in the workplace.
That's not what we're talking about, though, is it?
When you say equality at the workplace, you mean sameness in the workplace.
And not difference in the workplace, which is actually the consequence of free opportunity.
So yes, yes, it might well indeed hurt the plan of the gender communists, but that's a good thing.
Because I am a liberal and I want to see the plan of the gender communists be hurt.
Women's rights will remain in exactly the same condition as they were when we were in the EU, but feminist gender communism won't.
I'm sorry that this episode is going to turn into something of this weekend Jacob Rees-Mogg, but you have to understand how the British press on the left is treating this man.
It's going nuts.
I imagine that they are afraid of Jacob Rees-Mogg's effect on Brexit because it looks like Jacob Rees-Mog might have an effect on Brexit, which, in my opinion, is bloody marvellous because as far as I'm concerned, he's the one man in the entire Conservative Party who genuinely understands the point, purpose and value of Brexit.
And he is so traditionally and culturally British, even if I disagree with him on policy, I think that someone like that taking the reins of government and leading the country is important for the British national identity.
And I think that him owning his aristocratic heritage only makes him more powerful.
Mogg is an unashamed Englishman.
I think that's very important.
Especially given the far-left denigration and racialization of anyone who wants to highlight their English heritage.
But again, I will talk more about this in my live shows.
Beneath the mask, Jacob Rees-Mogg is a dangerous and deceitful bully on secondment from the 18th century.
That's not true, is it?
He's actually not dangerous or deceitful, as far as I can tell.
I mean, I've watched plenty of interviews with the man.
I've watched his television appearances.
I've listened to his arguments and I find them quite salient.
They're very conservative, very high Tory, but they are fundamentally coming from a place of liberal values.
And I can imagine that's why the socialists at the Independent hate him so much.
Was there ever a more exquisitely polite thug than Jacob Rees-Mogg?
On indefinite secondment from the mid-18th century, this is not getting any more clever the more you say it.
The honourable member of the East India Company, that was quite amusing admittedly, has finally offered a flash of the real moggy behind the mask.
Hidden until now beneath the Savile Row three-piece and floridly courteous facade lies a deceitful bully with a taste for attacking those more honest than himself.
His Commons accusation of an anti-Brexit conspiracy involving a respected think tank and the treasury officials responsible for those dismal economic impact assessments was one thing.
Well, it actually seems to have some legs, doesn't it?
I mean, everyone, the Bank of England, the civil service, the MPs on both sides, all said something of the same refrain, as in, Brexit is going to tank the economy.
Brexit did not tank the economy.
In fact, the economy is doing remarkably well since Brexit.
I mean, I don't know why this is, I'm not an economist, I could spend a lot of time looking into it, but honestly, it's not really that relevant to this video.
All I'm saying is, you guys were wrong.
And it seems to be that you are continuing to be wrong.
Massively wrong in every way, shape, or form.
And the thing is, this doesn't necessarily have to be conscious.
I don't think it's actually like a conspiracy.
I think it's the natural interplay of various people, all who have the same bias.
He's not, in IQ terms, stupid.
He may again, like Boris, be one of those clever fools who seem to pepper British public life.
The spiritual children of Enoch Powell with pure intellects in inverse proportion to their common sense.
Oh god, anytime I listen to the left talking about common sense, I just want to eat my own head.
You guys have to understand that you are the antithesis of common sense.
You guys are opposed to the notion, as far as I can tell.
But he has more than enough mental capacity to appreciate that any allegation denied by a political ally originally confirmed it must be false.
In this context, he would repeat it only if he calculated the personal benefit outweighs any contamination of his USP and is a paradigm of civility and reasonableness in a rude and shouty world.
Well, honestly, I think you might have a point.
Again, I don't know whether it's a conspiracy, but you do seem to have a problem actually identifying what the circumstances are and what's likely to happen from these circumstances in the future.
For all the pretense to altruistic patriotism.
In other words, this is just another attention-craving mega-narcissist.
It's me, me, me with him.
Yeah, that's really how it comes across.
That's what everyone-that's the impression that people get from Jacob Reesmog.
He's just some wacko narcissist who can't stop talking about himself, especially when he's talking about the details of Brexit, or the actual moral good of capitalism, or something like this.
No, no, no, it's all about himself.
This is totally fair criticism that everyone is persuaded by, and this isn't just your echo chamber speaking to itself.
Or as the French tauntingly chanted him when he takes to the vintage Bentley to Normandy, Moggy, Moggy, Moggy, Moy, Moy, Moy.
Really, do they?
Is that something that happens a lot, is it?
He would very much like to be PM and reckons any ingratiation with Brexit Ultras, even at the cost of his wider reputation, will help.
I don't see how him supporting Brexit is going to hurt his reputation, given how he made his name as a hardcore Brexiteer, which is one of the reasons I can overlook the other policy disagreements I have with him, especially how he doesn't seem to be interested in implementing his own private preferences as policy.
To me, as perhaps to you, the only credible source of the vision of Moggy waving from outside number 10 is a powerful hallucinogen.
If I were you, I'd take a step out of your bubble for a minute, because every time I'm feeling down and I want to have a laugh, I go to Donald Trump's Twitter account, and the only line in the description is the 45th President of the United States.
And it cheers me right up.
If I were you, I would not start acting like it's highly unlikely that we might get the most British Prime Minister in decades in the next few months.
Things are looking bad for Theresa May, and this needs to be sorted quickly.
Jacob Rees-Mog, I feel, would be an able negotiator for Britain during a time of crisis that is Brexit.
Because since we have been trapped in history's worst acid trip since the referendum, and I love that you have to characterize it as a crazy acid trip, as in you don't understand the politics of the people you are opposing, and the only rule of thumb left is that the craziest thing imaginable has to be the bookie's favourite.
That Moggy remains 5-1 favourite to replace Theresa May is more because than in spite of his exposure as a recidivist fibber, oh don't even get me started, the dwindling band of old white rural, mostly male party members who pick Tory leaders is cocooned within the demented fancy bubble of a post-Brexit Imperial Renaissance.
I don't think anyone in the Brexit camp is suggesting that we reform the Empire.
Whether his fellow MPs would put him in the final two from whom the members choose is another matter, and that is actually the stumbling block that Mog has, because it's certainly not his public appeal.
He seems to be rather popular as an MP, which is unusual for an MP, because MPs are generally not very popular in this country, as in most of them have a negative opinion rating.
One of them, Heidi Allen, promises to leave the party if he wins.
I'm guessing she was a Ramona.
If others feel the same, they have more to fret over this lack of any ministerial experience.
Given the Brexit cluelessness of the vastly experienced, oh my god, I assume you're talking about yourselves, you can't conceive of how a nine-year-old on Ritalin could do worse.
You guys are acting like the nine-year-olds on Ritterin.
I mean, you do understand that all of this is based on impression.
If Angela Merkel were to see a united Britain, where the left was like, Right okay, we didn't get what we wanted, but we are still British, and we do want the best for the nation, and so now we are just going to be in full support of Theresa May and her attempts to secure the best deal for Britain coming out of the EU, because that is in the interests of the British people,
then she would be in a much weaker negotiating position than she already is, and it turns out her negotiating position is actually really weak.
But Theresa May is even weaker.
And instead of just castigating Corbyn and the rest of the left in harsh moral terms, she agrees to their premises.
She agrees that they have a point, and it drags her down.
She can't actually stand up to Merkel because fundamentally, she agrees with Merkel.
She was a remainer too.
She needs the moral fortitude to carry this through, and whipping the left into line should have been the first thing that she did.
All of her efforts should have been assaulting the left for being unpatriotic.
Now is not the time to quibble, and anyone who is quibbling is being unpatriotic and is trying to hurt the nation.
But instead, Theresa May is too weak to do anything.
I think this bit's my absolute favourite, though.
More worrying to any MP with a small majority is what the Americans call relatability.
There can't be any more than a few dozen citizens or subjects as he'd prefer it.
That's that's such an unbelievably disingenuous thing to say.
And the thing is, like, I don't want to say offensive because I don't want to make offense the reason for what I'm saying, but like, this is the same as saying that he is just a tyrant, when I have seen nothing from Jacob Reesmog that would suggest this.
In fact, he seems to be an avid defender of the British citizen, as in the concept of citizenship and why it's important.
It's one of the core pillars on which his anti-EU stance is based.
And I think it's absolutely fantastic that Mog is actually going after Mayon Hammond as leadership speculation mounts.
Mog is actually making understated and subtle manoeuvres to put himself in a position where he might actually be a viable candidate for leader, and I honestly don't think the Conservative Party have a single person who might do a better job.
He is actually publicly manoeuvring to put himself in the running for the leadership, which is fantastic.
Mogg said that the Prime Minister does not look like she's having fun in Downing Street, and attacked her gloomy 2017 election campaign.
The Brexiteer also indicated that Chancellor Mr Hammond should take responsibility for a row over disputed Treasury data that points to the UK being worse off outside the EU regardless of its future relationship.
Despite Reesmog recently being named favourite as the next leader in a survey of grassroots Tory members, it said it would be very difficult for him as a father of six children to do the top job.
I think he'll manage.
Mogg is also a party member.
He understands how the game is played and he has been stridently and indefatigably supportive of Theresa May, even in her weakest moments, because he understands that this is how it is done.
He has to be self-effacing and this is just another one of those things.
Asked at the Press Association about the suggestions he wants to be Prime Minister, Mr. Rees-Mogg said, I think want is very much the wrong word.
If you look at Mrs. May, it seems she's quite clear she does it because it's her duty to do it.
I don't get the impression that it's a lot of fun for her, it's hard work.
I've got six children, it would be very, very difficult as a family man, so want is not the right word.
I'm very happy as a backbencher, and what I do want is Mrs. May to stay Prime Minister.
As you say, Jacob, but let's be honest.
No one's going to be disappointed if they become a politician and accidentally find themselves as Prime Minister.
But the best coverage of Mog has been from The Guardian.
Jacob Rees Mog and the shadowy group of Tories shaping Brexit.
Dun dun dun.
Like they're supervillains or something.
Like they're not working in the interests of the country.
Like they haven't been making principled arguments for the last year and a half.
Oh yeah, now it's a shadowy conspiracy because it's going against what the Guardian, of all publications, would want.
It has no websites, no public list of members, and it is accused of misusing taxpayers' money.
But despite its shadowy status, Jacob Rees-Mogg's European research group is powerful enough to shape Theresa May's Brexit policy and has been accused of tearing the Conservative Party apart.
Well, think about that for a moment.
Okay, let's- I mean, I would like to see more transparency too, in fact.
But Theresa May's Brexit policy must have been remarkably weak from the outset given how she was a Remainer.
Why would she even have a Brexit policy?
But Mog has been a hardcore Brexiteer.
Of course he'd be interested in promoting a Brexit policy, and of course he would have some sort of group that would spend their time researching it to make arguments.
It's not in any way suspicious or controversial that that's the case.
The RG and Mog are vigorous proponents of a hard Brexit approach.
They've been at the centre of recent Tory disagreements and operate in tandem with junior ministers in the Brexit department, who in turn used to be at the top of the ERG.
This week, Mog has attacked Philip Hammond's Treasury and pushed Theresa May in ruling out membership of any customs union post-Brexit.
Good!
He should be doing this!
He should be pressuring the government to do Brexit properly, to make sure that we are actually a foreign country to the European Union, and make them act as such.
On Tuesday morning, the leading pro-European Conservative backbencher Anna Subry expressed her dismay at the group's influence, which is presumably why she's threatening to quit.
It feels like, and I think there's evidence to support this, that Theresa is in hock to these 35 hard Brexiteers.
Well yes, but the British public have voted for Brexit.
Theresa May has said Brexit means Brexit and that's what she's going to do.
Why wouldn't she listen to the hard Brexiteers?
Why would you think that a pro-European remainer would be someone who would have excessive influence at this time?
Your goals are diametrically opposed to the goals voted on by the British public.
We want to leave, end of story.
But she says, they don't represent my party.
But more importantly, they don't represent the people who voted to leave.
Well, I actually think they probably do.
I think that if they would sit there in front of a pro-leave audience and start making their points, they'd probably get thunderous rounds of applause.
I don't know why they don't do something like that.
Why not have Jacob Riesmog and a bunch of these other 35 hard Brexiteers hire out a big audience hall in wherever, somewhere in London, presumably, and sit there making their pro-hard Brexit arguments.
I'm sure that they are playing politics very well within their party, but they could be doing a lot more public outreach to strengthen their hands.
The Guardian are well aware that Reesmog's time is coming.
He is the man that Britain actually wants.
He actually is resonating with people because he represents more than just independence.
I think he represents a spirit of Britishness that has been constantly wheedled away by people like Jeremy Corbyn, who do not in any way seem to support Britishness whatsoever.
I mean there is nothing proud about anything that the left does.
But Jacob Reesmog is not apologising for who he is, he's not apologising for being English, and he's not apologising for wanting a sovereign British state.
There is a lot of power in that to the average British person, the working man, who believes in these things.
And they believe in these things not just because it's part of their identity, but because this is the social fabric of this country.
This is what we are talking about.
And I know it's odd and nebulous and vague, but there really is something to this.
As I said, I've been reading a lot of evolutionary psychology recently.
And I think Heid has actually made some key points that he's backed with solid evidence that this is something that the right wing actually understands.
And this is something that the left has completely forgotten how to taste.
And this is one of the reasons that they are starting to lose constantly.
I'm not going to cover this one in any more detail, but there's a kind of constancy about Jacob Reesmog and the fact that he has been Jacob Reesmog since he was a child, as you can see from this picture, that I think is going to seem distinctly reassuring to the British electorate, just to the psyche of the British person.
And I think that honestly is one of the reasons that we even still have an aristocracy, even though they don't have any more rights than the average citizen.
We don't mind them existing because they connect us to a previous time in the British state, where there were these educated statesmen who would actually act in the interests of the nation and not just their own interest.
Not that they're not acting in their own interests, of course.
There is, I think, something that the average person on the street who just wants to get on with their day is going to find deeply reassuring about Mogg's presentation and Mog's dress, his sense of self, and his sense of country and personality.
I think that is going to be one of the key factors that pushes Mog into the lead.
And also, as comedian Stuart Lee has said, satire only makes Jacob Reesmog stronger.
You can't mock this man because he owns everything you say.
And this is what he says.
He ingests our insults and owns them.
Because your insults are not coming from the perspective of a person who considers themselves British first.
Everything you say comes from the perspective of people who actually dislike the character of the British nation, the concept of the nation-state, and the very existence of such an identity, and seek to undermine it at every turn, and supplant it with foreign identities.
Jacob Riesmog is the living avatar of Britishness, and he doesn't play that down at all.
So, when you call him an old Etonian, an aristocrat, a toff, it just makes you look ridiculous, especially when he is given any amount of time to talk.
And again, in The Guardian, and I have to-this is all from this week.
They have been on a full-scale propaganda campaign against Mog, and it's because I think they realize that his time has come.
He is the perfect politician for our confused times.
And again, I didn't want this to be an entirely Mog-based episode, but they have been pumping this out across various different platforms.
And I just chose these ones because they seem to be most telling about the mindset of the left.
They don't know how to deal with Mog.
He is going to continually ream them, and they don't know what they can do about it.
It has happened.
Jacob Rees-Mog has gone from being a joke to a serious contender for a senior role within the Tory cabinet.
At the weekend, it was whispered that a dream team would be fielded by Eurosceptics against Theresa Maya Firstance and the Customs Union were to soften.
In his first iteration, Rees Mog would be Chancellor, but talk of him becoming Prime Minister is no longer seen as farcical.
We conjured him into being by laughing him.
No, no, that's not happening.
Well, I mean, don't go wrong, that probably helped.
But he conjured himself into being by being a traditional Englishman, by being a traditional English aristocrat, in fact, who speaks Latin, who has done the political science necessary to understand why the sovereignty argument is the most powerful argument for Brexit.
The immigration argument is really kind of contextual, but the sovereignty argument is eternal, especially if you are a citizen of Britain, which British people are.
This is why he is doing so well.
And your attempts to just laugh him off as a fop, or a dandy, or an out-of-touch, high-faluting aristocrat, it just doesn't work.
It's like a spell gone wrong.
In the search for an alternative to the paralysed prime minister, for someone who could guide the country through its most challenging negotiations since the Second World War, we somehow have veered towards a person whose views, we have somehow veered towards a person whose views are preserved in prehistoric amber.
You mean someone who is promoting traditional liberal values.
Classical liberal values, if you will.
You mean values that work, that we should return to.
Yes, I agree.
I think that to you these are preserved in prehistoric amber.
We no longer have the luxury of certainty, no longer the indulgence to laugh at or dismiss the politically absurd, just in case an extreme right-wing anachronism is really elected.
And it's incredibly telling about the position of the left, because they know that they are actually increasingly less powerful by the day, and they describe it like this.
Every internal scuffle in the Tory Party is another round of Russian roulette for the country, except the gun has no empty chambers.
Okay.
But for them, that's a good thing.
They don't consider it Russian roulette.
What you're saying is they're going to start shooting socialism in the head.
He is, as you say, the perfect politician to fill a vacuum.
A mixture of genuine antiquity and manners and values and confected confidence.
Yes, but that's something British people appreciate.
I think there is a deep part of the British psyche that expects our aristocrats to act like statesmen.
I think Mogg appeals directly to this.
And I think that he's going to absolutely thrash you guys when it comes to him having a debate with someone like Jeremy Corbyn.
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