Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - The Social Parliament

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Aug. 8, 2018 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

11:44

The Social Parliament

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	So this is going to be a kind of rambling op-ed style video that I'm not going to do any editing on really, so it's just about what I'm going to say.
	But I've noticed there's a it's a really disturbing turn of events going on in societies at the moment on the internet because a lot of society takes place on the internet.
	Society as the concept of the groups and individuals who operate to make up what we consider to be the social fabric.
	The actual interactions with one another, the public dialogues that are going on, how we treat one another.
	It's all going to a head because there's been so much tension recently and I think that this is something that we really all have to hash out.
	Almost everyone's online actions are controlled by a 300 square mile area of San Francisco.
	That's a real problem because they have a specific kind of culture there and it's very very very far to the left and they are not comfortable when they have to abide by the sort of more liberal or conservative viewpoints that the rest of the world hold in comparison to their own.
	If there's one thing I have seen through all of the apologies, all of the public statements these social media platform owners have had to make like Zuckerberg talking about this Holocaust denial, like Jack Conte from Patreon with Lauren Southern, like Jack Dorsey with all of the bannings from Twitter, given how Twitter decided to call themselves at the first a free speech platform.
	You can tell these people don't want to have to listen to other people's rules.
	They think that these people are bad and they should get rid of them and their platform would be better if those people weren't there.
	They're wrong.
	The fact that these people are there is what makes their platform interesting.
	No one wants to just hear the beacons from within your echo chamber.
	But if they had their way, they would just remove those people.
	It wouldn't even be a question.
	Morally speaking, it would be absolutely righteous to keep these people out of what they consider to be the public dialogue.
	Because it is.
	And I think that really, if you're going to be what can constitute the public space, the marketplace in the city-state, you know, the speaker's corner, whatever it is, whatever it is, you have your public dialogue around, removing people from that because you don't like their points of view is really unconscionable.
	They are citizens too.
	They can still vote.
	They are important.
	They are a part of society.
	Even if you don't like them.
	To be taken down for hate speech is literally saying you have been taken down because we didn't like what you said.
	It's an entirely political concept.
	The things that are considered hate speech by the far left are considered positive, truthful speech by the far right.
	And Alex Jones was banned because he is a political target.
	The excuses I hear of, oh, well, there was this one guy because of Pizza Gate went and shot into a pizza parlour.
	Okay.
	Do you not remember the Bernie Bro, young Turk subscriber who shot a Republican judge?
	I think it was.
	There are people who go and shoot up places because they don't get laid.
	There was a woman who shot up YouTube headquarters because she got fucking demonetized.
	Everyone has one.
	There was a guy who went on a killing spree and yelled free speech or die.
	Even us, the free speech movement, have our fucking shooter.
	Everyone has one.
	There have been two trans ones now.
	There was Omar Mateen, wasn't he gay?
	Like, everyone has one of these.
	That is not an excuse.
	So 100 years ago, there was a general clamouring for secondary parliaments in European nations.
	For example, in the early 20th century, the Guild Socialists of Britain proposed a new social parliament.
	They wanted this because of the vicious mixture of functions in the single soul political parliament.
	They wanted the old political parliament consigned to its proper and original functions of the conduct of the external relations and maintenance of law and order of the state.
	They wanted the social parliament to take over everything else.
	Literally so they could manage a quote way of life or type of civilization, a specific way that they think that our countries should be.
	The idea was rejected in Britain as being too radical, but Ernest Barker, a professor of political science at Cambridge and Sir Ernest Barker, sorry, he was knighted, he was an advisor to the Liberal Party.
	He came to the conclusion that if a social parliament did come into existence, it should not have the powers of legislation.
	He did also note that a social parliament might arise naturally from within society.
	And I think that's what we're seeing with the rise of social media.
	Everyone and their mother these days uses some form of social media.
	And it's usually one of about half a dozen companies.
	We need to bear in mind that this is incredibly new.
	There are people alive at the moment for whom the internet is a brand new idea and they still don't really get to grips with it.
	And there are also people alive today who have never lived without it.
	And there are people who are growing up right now who will have never lived in a world before social media.
	So these are really important issues that we have to get to grips with and we have to do it quite quickly.
	Because what we're seeing is the major social media companies acting like a social parliament.
	Each one of them has rules and legislation in the form of terms and conditions.
	We are now seeing them being pulled based on political and quote-unquote moral reasons, not legal ones.
	Because people forget that the way the law is currently set up, social media companies are not liable for what is posted on them.
	The people who post on them are liable.
	Which is why none of them got rid of Alex Jones because he posted conspiracy theory nonsense.
	They got rid of him because he violated their hate speech policies.
	Alex Jones gets sued constantly for the conspiracy theory nonsense he puts out.
	It's just that a lot of times he wins those cases.
	You only hear about the one or two that which he doesn't.
	The state is doing its job by enforcing the legal contracts under the law against a plaintiff and Alex Jones.
	But now there is an extra step.
	Now there is a group of people in a certain area of the world, a quite small area of the world, who all share a particular moral code and all have the power to execute their own legislation.
	And we have just witnessed the first social media execution.
	It's one thing saying that YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Spotify, and Apple's iTunes all decide to get rid of Alex Jones in a very short space of time.
	But what's the rationale for deleting his LinkedIn account?
	He doesn't post content to that.
	I'm sure that there were others as well that were just absolutely asinine.
	This is now a personal witch hunt going on about deep unpersoning Alex Jones completely.
	This is just the execution of his online platform from the public discourse.
	Alex Jones has been told that because he doesn't hold progressive politics and violates their hate speech rules, that's it.
	You're unpersoned.
	Folks, that's just too much.
	That's way too much power in the hands of the far left.
	A bunch of puritanical language manipulators really, really, really think that they can create the perfect world through the use of language.
	And yes, it's as well in as it sounds.
	They're going to keep going.
	This is not going to stop with Alex Jones.
	And this is something that we have to do something about.
	And so I would suggest we go to Yoe Sprague, the guy with the YouTube union, and say, hi, as YouTubers, we're very concerned about what happened to Infowars.
	We think this was deeply inappropriate.
	Even if they can legitimately say, well, Alex Jones broke this policy, the fact that they all did it almost at once shows something else is happening.
	I'm not saying don't take legal recourse against Alex Jones.
	You should if you feel you have a good reason to do so.
	But executing a virtual death sentence because you all agree that look, we can just shoot this guy, just turning around, looking at one another and saying, right, we'll all just shut down his accounts and then we don't have to deal with them anymore.
	That's not something that I'm happy to see happen.
	No matter who he is.
	That is a disturbing amount of power to give to such a small geographical location over the finances of any online personality.
	I mean, I've like people, like people are getting dropped from PayPal, like alt-right people are getting dropped from PayPal.
	TERFs are being prevented from getting bank accounts.
	How far does this social parliament of progressives go?
	And the answer is there's no real good reason not to do the worst to everyone because these people are racist, sexist, homefoot, blah, blah, blah.
	And it would just be a better world if they just weren't in existence.
	If we just couldn't see or hear from them.
	There's no reason for them not to keep going.
	We can't just let this carry on like this.
	We have to start talking to these big companies.
	There is a YouTube union.
	I suggest that something is done along those lines.
	I'm a supporter of the idea of a union.
	We need to say to them, no, this is unacceptable.
	People on other platforms should say to these platforms, this is unacceptable.
	Because what the social media platforms are doing is forming a moral cartel.
	I mean, it just looks like we need to invoke antitrust laws for social media platforms and banning.
	I hear people talking about a bill of digital rights, and I think that's a fantastic idea because it looks like some kind of digital antitrust law is going to be required if social media platforms are just going to cooperate with each other just because they can to destroy their political enemies, which they just have.
	We can't just allow that kind of power to operate in society.
	That's dangerous for anyone.
	Anyone that they target can then this can then happen to them and we've got no legal means of recourse against it.
	This has to change.
	We're going to have to start working together.
	Like everyone.
	And the thing is, right, what was really interesting about Alex Jones is that the moment that Jenk actually met Alex Jones, he flipped out and lost his shit.
	I found that amazing.
	I thought they would just laugh at Alex Jones as the ridiculous caricature that he plays himself to be and they would just have fun with the fact that they're dealing with Alex Jones.
	But instead, they flipped out.
	It was crazy.
	And it just goes to show you the glass house that the left has built for itself.
	But anyway, I agree with Ernest Barker.
	I don't think this parliament should have legislative or executive powers.
	But instead it has both.
	And they have used them to publicly execute a man for political reasons.
	This is an incredibly precarious situation for everyone else.

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