Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - What is Kanye West Trying to Say？

All Episodes

Previous Next

May 4, 2018 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

23:44

What is Kanye West Trying to Say？

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Hey folks, I'm sorry to ambush you with this before I do the video, but I've come to a point where I can actually no longer afford my lawyer.
	For anyone who doesn't know, Akeelah Hughes is a social justice warrior who is suing me because I did a video mocking her from a video that she made after the failure of Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 presidential election.
	I'd taken a video that she had put out about the election night and edited it to juxtapose two different things to make a specific point.
	And I titled it with SJW Levels of Awareness.
	I'm firmly of the belief that this lines up completely with fair use laws in the United States.
	I didn't simply just reproduce her content for a different audience to try and steal money from her.
	I was very clearly making a political point.
	And she acknowledges that this is a political lawsuit in the first, I think it's three paragraphs of her initial complaint.
	Basically, I think this is a frivolous lawsuit.
	And I could have settled this and made it go away, at least made it a lot cheaper for myself, if I just accepted that I owed her some of the $150,000 that she was asking for and agreed to pay a you know a reasonable monthly sum for the next however many years.
	But I don't think I did anything wrong.
	And I think that it's important to set the precedent in law, especially after the H3H3 case, which was successful for them.
	As far as I can tell, the lawsuit is going well for me, but I don't want to jinx it or comment on it when it might not be appropriate or something like that.
	But I'm reasonably certain that it is going as well as can be expected.
	And my lawyer has done a very, very good job so far.
	But as I said, I've actually come to the point where I just don't have any money left.
	It turns out that the last month was a lot more expensive than I was expecting.
	Even when someone says they're going to pay for your travel, there are still a lot of extra costs that are surrounding this.
	And so even if they pay for the flight and the hotel, there are still lots of other costs that have just mounted up to the point where I just didn't think it was going to happen.
	I mean, I've really enjoyed making all of the trips out to places and I've really enjoyed going places and doing things.
	And hopefully I've provided good content from what I've done.
	But it's left me with no money and I don't know what else to do now.
	It seems that the two options that I had were do sponsored videos, which I'm sure anyone who's watched my channel for any length of time will know that that's really going into the entire ethos of my channel, despite the fact that I probably could make a lot of money that way.
	Or it was to follow other people's suggestion and set up a GoFundMe.
	So I guess I've got to go for the GoFundMe.
	I've set a goal of £40,000, but that's really to cover the...
	I've spent around $30,000 so far, and the court case is not at the end.
	So I don't know whether that's enough.
	But I mean, beyond that, I think I can probably afford it.
	I mean, I really wanted to be able to just pay for this myself.
	And I haven't asked anyone to help me with the lawsuit up until now.
	But I just can't afford it anymore.
	And I really don't want to lose because I can't afford it.
	And so I have no other choice as far as I can see.
	A link will be in the description.
	And thank you to everyone who contributes.
	I honestly can't tell you how much I appreciate it.
	And without further ado, I'll get on with the video.
	So I am seeing an awful lot of confusion about the things that Ken A. West is saying in public and people's apparent inability to interpret this in the way I think that he is trying to have these things interpreted.
	And I don't envy him because what he's trying to talk about is something very difficult to address.
	It's something about the culture in which he lives.
	And so it's very difficult to pin down any specifics.
	And so needless to say, finding the right language to fully explain these ideas has been very difficult for him clearly.
	And it's also very difficult for the people that he's trying to talk to because they come from a completely different paradigm to Kanye West.
	They do not share the same fundamental axioms of their worldviews.
	And so when Kanye West is trying to say something to them, all they hear is that Kanye West has gone crazy.
	This, of course, is not the case.
	He is just not expressing himself in a way that they can really understand because he's trying to present ideas to them that have effectively been locked out of their thought processes.
	There has also been a great deal of confusion over the things that Kanye has actually said and the message that he's actually trying to put across.
	But if we listen to his words carefully, then we can see exactly what he's trying to say.
	Let's begin with the most controversial thing that he has said of late, which is that for black people, slavery is a choice.
	When you hear about slavery for 400 years, for 400 years, that sounds like a choice.
	Like, you was there for 400 years and it's all of y'all?
	Much of the objection to what Kanye has said here is just in the way that he said it, not what his actual words are.
	When you hear about slavery for 400 years, that sounds like a choice, is a very true statement, given that slavery ended 150 years ago.
	It started 400 years ago.
	It went on for about 260 years, and it has been over since then.
	He's not saying that black people had the choice not to be enslaved.
	What he's saying is that the black people who are living here and now, who were never enslaved, have the choice as to whether they're going to let the weight of the past crush them or not.
	And as Candace Owens repeatedly points out, none of the people involved were even living under Jim Crow.
	So to continually be talking about it now in 2018, so many years after it ended, is indeed a choice.
	But the thing is, I think what he's saying here is actually deeper than what it seems.
	It's not just the choice to continually think and talk about slavery, even though that really hasn't been something that has affected black communities for quite some time.
	The problem is choosing to be a victim of it.
	To be the victim of a past that you cannot seem to shrug off.
	And when he tries, he gets in trouble with all of the people around him.
	Because Kanye West does not want to be a victim.
	But one of the things that he's complaining about is the stifling, progressive groupthink that he has to live under, especially within the black community, who have been persuaded for years now that they are the perpetual victims of white supremacy and that they must feel like victims.
	And this is what he's trying to address.
	You know, like, it's like we're mentally in prison.
	I like the word prison because slavery goes too direct to the idea of blacks.
	It's like slavery, Holocaust, Holocaust, Jews, slavery is blacks.
	It's very astute of him to have deciphered this on his own.
	This is why Natalie Portman caused such a stir when she said the Holocaust is no worse than other genocides.
	I've got no doubt from the Jewish friends that I have and talking to them about this that the Holocaust looms large in Jewish culture in much the same way slavery does in black culture.
	So prison is something that unites us as one race.
	Blacks and whites being one race.
	That we're one, we're the human race, we're human beings and stuff.
	And then eventually, you know, can I go back to something you just said?
	Because I don't want to let it pass.
	You said that slavery was around for 400 years at a point it becomes a choice?
	Yeah, right now we're choosing to be enslaved.
	We're like, okay, so Ibro, I FaceTime him, and I'm there with Candace, right?
	And Ibro starts bringing up these, his version of facts, right?
	And Candace has facts.
	She's researched, right?
	Candace Owens has facts, she's researched.
	And then Candace just pulls out her Jedi lightsaber and just, you know, chops Ibro's head off with facts.
	The Ibro FaceTimes me the next day and he's talking about the scoop, scoop, poop.
	He wants to talk about music now.
	I said, yo, you're going to have Candace on your show?
	He's like, no, I'm not.
	She's mean.
	This is another very good observation by Kanye.
	Yes, these people do operate with feels over reals.
	He is seeing exactly what we have been talking about from the far left for a long time and he's reacting directly to it.
	What drove you to that?
	What was your point?
	What are you trying to do with the message you're sending?
	Well, it was really just my subconscious.
	It was a feeling I had.
	You know, like people were taught how to think, we're taught how to feel.
	We don't know how to think for ourselves.
	We don't know how to feel for ourselves.
	People say feel free, but they don't really want us to feel free.
	And I felt a freedom in, first of all, just doing something that everybody tells you not to do.
	Like you can't do it for this reason.
	You can't do this for that reason.
	So, and you know, I'm not coming up here to justify anything.
	It's, you know, you can't tell me nothing.
	I made the song.
	You know what I'm saying?
	Like, you can't tell me what I'm, you know, supposed to do.
	And that's really the crux of all of this: is that Kanye feels oppressed by the black victim narrative.
	He is a phenomenally successful man.
	And I just want to point out that he genuinely should be an inspirational figure to young black men.
	And honestly, he is actually a fantastic role model.
	He is a father and husband, a successful man who is out there doing what he thinks is right, following his conscience in the world as he sees it.
	This is incredibly laudable.
	And he's saying that he wants to be free.
	He wants to be free of the cultural burden that is being placed upon him by all of the people around him because they don't know how to get rid of it themselves.
	But Kanye West is not their victim.
	They can't make him a victim.
	He's unbelievably successful.
	And it's not like he's out preaching hatred or intolerance.
	All he's been saying is we should love one another.
	All this father and husband has been saying is that we should look beyond blaming white people.
	Einstein says the definite insanity is doing the same thing, expecting a different result.
	So we keep on saying, I hate you, I hate you, f you, fk you, f you.
	How are we going to get a different result out of hate?
	Why don't we just try love?
	Why don't we just try love?
	Why can't it be okay for an influential rapper in the black community to go up to the president and talk to him about how we can make a change one by one by one?
	We have the resources for a peaceful world.
	What Kanye West is trying to say to the people he is around is that black people must forgive white people for slavery.
	That's what he is trying to say.
	Carrying the hatred of white people till the end of time is not good for black people.
	It is not good to carry hatred within your heart.
	it turns you into the sort of person you don't want to be.
	And Kanye is finally being the kind of person that he wants to be.
	And that's a man who's going around preaching love and acceptance of other people, trying to erase the divisions between the races rather than increase them.
	And the man who is working at TMZ, who he has an altercation with, just can't bring himself to do it.
	And while you are making music and being an artist and living the life that you've earned by being a genius, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats to our lives.
	We have to deal with the marginalization that has come from the 400 years of slavery that you said for our people was a choice.
	Every day we have to walk into that truth while you choose to say things that to be honest with you, dog, are nonsensical.
	You want to think freely?
	That's fine.
	I'll combat your free thought with my free thought because mine is grounded in a reality that I've been given and a reality that I'm going to change, but I'm not going to do it by pretending that the enemies are on the same team as me.
	The white people have to be the enemies in his worldview.
	He has been given this worldview.
	He even says it and Kanye smiles and points at him.
	You aren't thinking for yourself and you're not thinking about yourself.
	You're thinking about other people.
	You're not doing what Jordan Peterson would recommend and sorting yourself out.
	This is what Kanye is trying to put across.
	He is not being oppressed by white people and neither is the man who's talking to him.
	Neither of them are.
	They're being oppressed by the ghosts of the past that they need to make peace with in order to be able to move forward.
	And the first thing about that is not considering white people to be the enemy.
	And I'm sure I don't have to explain why, but I will anyway, because no white people around today support slavery or any other form of oppression for black people or any other kind of person on the basis of their race.
	And so when Kanye West is saying, well, we're trapped in a mental prison, he's absolutely right.
	Because a worldview in which you treat yourself as the inferior of white people because of a historical injustice means you are imprisoning yourself within a particular worldview and it's a worldview that requires you to hate another type of person.
	My wife said to my daughter, tell daddy what you learned in school.
	And she said, I learned that mama's white and I'm black.
	I said, damn, I wish I got the heads up.
	They said, no, we had to tell her because of Martin Luther King's birthday.
	But a white teacher told her that.
	So what does it mean to be black in America if a white teacher tells her that she's black?
	You might be Kanye West's daughter, but you black.
	My daughter was free.
	We start putting these ideas and ideals on people.
	That's why we are in a simulation.
	And again, Kanye is absolutely right.
	If he chooses, he doesn't have to be imprisoned by the past.
	And exactly as he said, until his daughter was told that she is black, that she is oppressed, she was free.
	And like any responsible parent, he doesn't want to give his child that mindset.
	He doesn't want to put her in a position where she feels bad just because of what she is.
	Kanye West is literally saying we need to move beyond this.
	And the host knows exactly what he means when he says that he feels oppressed by the victim culture around him and that he wants to get past it.
	The reason I was really interested in doing this with Kanye is because he got me thinking about the notion of free thought, which honestly, on that level, I completely agree with him.
	I think free thought is almost dead in this country, that people are bullied into feeling a certain way.
	And if you don't believe what somebody else does, they will bully you and boycott you and try to kill you.
	And that's what I was connecting with.
	Not specific issues, but you tell us what the root of all of this is.
	What are we talking about?
	Are we talking about free thought, free love?
	What is it?
	It's free love.
	It's the spirit.
	You know, you had in the office, you had Tupac and John Lennon on the wall.
	It's, I don't want to be the third one, but I'm willing to be the third one for free love on that wall.
	You understand what I'm saying?
	Oh, I hear what you're saying.
	If I say I love Dr. Jan Adams that performed surgery, my mother's final surgery, people don't want to accept forgiveness and love.
	Like even Harvey, you said you can't love everyone when we talked about the Jan Adams.
	And I believe that.
	But does God want you to love everyone?
	Well, first of all, do you believe in God?
	Do you think that's the only thing that I'm saying?
	Yes, but I don't necessarily think, I know people say that, Kanye.
	I don't know.
	I don't know where that comes from.
	If you start thinking about love and start feeling love and thinking about forgiveness, then you can overcome things.
	This is such good advice to the black community.
	I don't even know where to begin.
	Kanye West knows exactly what is happening with black people at the moment, and he is literally breaking the conditioning on it.
	He has come to understand that it is black people that are holding on to this.
	And it also is progressive white people who think they're doing a service to black people by reinforcing this.
	And they are absolutely not.
	We are drugged out.
	We are following other people's opinions.
	We are controlled by the media.
	And today it all changes.
	You got Tupac and Lennon in that hallway.
	Today it all changes.
	We need to think how to think free.
	We need to be free thinkers.
	Then we need to learn how to feel free.
	When the media is constantly reinforcing the narrative that black people are eternal victims, how can black people ever feel free?
	It's downright irresponsible.
	And that's what Kanye is addressing directly right now.
	In what seems to be a crazy outburst, he's actually being incredibly lucid.
	He's just not speaking in a way that they can understand.
	I'm obviously personally very interested in this, the concept of that black men have to be perfect at all times.
	It was just a point about Hollywood and the media perception of black men, this perfect idea of superhero with Obama or Michael Jordan.
	I want to show people that it's okay to screw up and you still can make it through things.
	There is nothing to criticize here.
	Nothing that Kanye is saying is even vaguely controversial for anyone of any other race but black.
	This is exactly the kind of advice that my father gave to me and that I will give to my son.
	The reason that Kanye's words are resonating with so many people is because he is talking about self-empowerment.
	He's not saying that you have to rely on other people.
	You can rely on yourself.
	You do not have to be chained to the past, a past you did not live through.
	It doesn't have to have power over you.
	You can have power over yourself.
	We need to start being worried about ourselves and stop being worried about what other people think.
	And we have the right to free thought.
	If the black community is lucky, then Kanye West's words are literally going to echo through it and destroy the hegemonic narrative that the left has created about black people.
	If we're lucky, if black people are lucky, this will make things better for them.
	Because Kanye West will not be your victim.
	He finds it oppressive.
	He is living a decent life.
	He is being a decent man.
	And he is trying to help the world in the only way that he knows how.
	And he is right.
	Fundamentally, 100%, I would support absolutely everything he has said, regardless of the messy way in which he has said it.
	And all of the talking heads at CNN who are sat around applauding one another for trying to enforce the victim mentality amongst other black people who are less successful than themselves really need to take a look in the mirror.
	By the fact that you have morphed into something to me that's not real.
	Clarity.
	That was the opposite of clarity.
	The man didn't even recognize what Kanye West has become.
	A free man, a man free of the chains of the past.
	Kanye West has let it go.
	He's moved beyond it.
	And this is exactly, as this CNN commentator says, just like the allegory of Plato's Cave, except they are the ones still trapped in the cave.
	If you're enlightened, if you're an independent free thinker, then you have sort of gone through the process of from benightment to being free.
	It reminds me of the allegory of Plato's Cave, where they're the individuals who see these shadows before them and they believe that the shadows they see in front of them is true.
	But it's not true.
	It's not true at all.
	And that's what's so troubling about this, that we're having this conversation about this guy with this huge platform.
	So many people who follow him take those words as true.
	This guy clearly doesn't understand Plato's allegory because the point is that when someone goes out of the cave and sees reality beyond the shadows and comes back and tries to explain it to the people who are still in the cave, they just can't understand it.
	And they treat him like he's crazy.
	This is exactly what they are doing to Kanye West.
	But this is why, you know, I was going to say, this is why we have to be so careful about considering people geniuses, right?
	So many people say Kanye's a genius.
	Without a doubt, he's had a successful music career.
	He's done fairly well for himself.
	He's gained so much of the world.
	And yet, despite all of the advancements that he has made economically speaking, he's still so ignorant of all the encounters, if you will, that occur between human nature and the human experiences and why certain people are impacted by certain things differently and how marginalized groups of people struggle in comparison to those who are not marginalized at all.
	This is phenomenally ironic.
	Kanye West is part of one of these groups that he is talking about.
	I mean, you would think that the fact that you have four successful black people on CNN discussing how black people cannot be successful should really be something they need to think about.
	And Kanye has left the cave.
	He's come back and said, no, guys, this is all just shadows on the wall.
	There is actually a whole world out there.
	And all we have to do is embrace it.
	And instead of being imprisoned in the cave of slavery, we can go out and be free.

▲