Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Never Bet on Wokeness ｜ This Week in Stupid (09⧸09⧸2018)

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Sept. 9, 2018 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

21:31

Never Bet on Wokeness ｜ This Week in Stupid (09⧸09⧸2018)

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	Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 9th of September 2018.
	Before I start this week folks, I'm afraid it's BattleStions on the link tax and the copyright directive, the EU's Article 11 and 13, which have come back around for the second vote.
	During the first vote we managed to get them to delay this and now this is the second vote that's going to be happening next week.
	Apparently there has been a large lobbying effort from various groups that have resulted in thousands of emails being sent in favour of Article 13 to MEPs.
	So if you live in Europe, I would absolutely recommend emailing your MP about this.
	The best thing to do is to be polite, reasonable, and write your own email explaining why you want your representative to support Jared Batten's motion to reject outright the Voss report, that's V-O-S-S report, and that you want them to vote to reject Article 11, the link tax, Article 13, the Copyright Directive.
	Again, be polite, be reasonable, but explain yourself clearly.
	This is you becoming involved in the process as a citizen, so don't treat it like it's frivolous, but definitely do send those emails.
	I'll leave a link in the description and pin to the comments where you can find who your local MEP is and then get in contact with them.
	Should take you about five minutes.
	Please do this folks.
	And next week, I will actually be going to Strasbourg to the European Parliament to actually cover these events on the ground as part of my being a member of UKIP.
	I have absolutely no idea what kind of content I'm going to bring back from there.
	Anyway, I find Nike's Colin Kaepernick advert very interesting.
	This is it just in case you hadn't seen it.
	There is a longer advert, our two-minute advert that goes along with that, but I'm not going to play it just in case it's copyrighted.
	But this is the ethos of it.
	Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.
	While one might be able to say that he's sacrificed his career in professional football, which I think what he did, one also can't deny that he's going to have made millions from this advertising campaign.
	And he is turning himself into a progressive activist with a particularly large reach and a lot of influence.
	I would hazard a guess that more people are aware of him now than because of his career in football.
	I mean, I am one of those people.
	To say that he's sacrificed everything is a bit disingenuous, which is pretty much what people's complaint with this advert is.
	This is all very disingenuous, and it's clearly designed to score points in the culture war.
	Nike are banking on politics to sell sneakers.
	And apparently it's working.
	Nike's online sales jumped 31% after the company unveiled Kaepernick campaign data shows.
	So despite a minus 0.12% drop in Nike shares, their sales actually grew 31% from the Sunday of Labor Day weekend through Tuesday, as compared with a 17% gain recorded for the same period last year.
	There was speculation that the Nike Kaepernick campaign would lead to a drop in sales, but our data over the last week does not support that theory.
	Other than the fact that it's quite disingenuous, I'm not particularly bothered about this advert, just like I was never particularly bothered about Kaepernick taking a knee.
	I don't care.
	You're free to do it.
	Enjoy.
	The main issue I have with the adverts can be summed up in this line.
	Calling a dream crazy is not an insult, it's a compliment.
	Okay, that does sound romantic and inspiring.
	It seems kind of irresponsible to me, and it seems like a recipe for a bunch of broken dreams.
	I would suggest setting yourself a decent target, but one that you might actually be able to reach.
	And I'm a firm believer in the it takes one step at a time to climb a mountain, and so rather than focusing on the end goal, just focus on an improvement of what's in front of you, and step by step by step, you'll realize in a hundred steps, you're in a totally different place from where you started, with all of these achievements under your belt.
	Whereas someone who's just aiming right for the top from the very start, I think they're much more likely to fail and to cut corners and to try and skip over problem parts just to reach that end goal.
	And I don't think that the end goal has actually reached that way.
	Because this was a political statement, obviously the people on the other side of the political argument decided they needed to make a statement themselves.
	This was an event so stupid that even Trevor Noah could make a joke out of it.
	It really doesn't matter to Nike whether you burn the things you have already purchased from them.
	Personally, I would just close my wallet if I had a problem with this.
	Be not Nike, if you want to have a political conversation, we can do that.
	If you want to talk about the cause that Colin Kaepernick is championing, Black Lives Matter, we can do that.
	We can absolutely have a conversation as to why so many black people are being shot by police.
	We can have a conversation about other problems that are occurring in black communities, if you want.
	But you have a problem when you run into an existing political movement and plant your flag this boldly.
	Do you think Black Lives Matter have been having a reasonable discussion with the general public for the last five years?
	Do you think that most people think Black Lives Matter is a good idea?
	Because it seems that most people don't agree with Colin Kaepernick.
	Nike's favorability drops double digits following new Just Do It Ad campaign.
	Here are the key findings.
	One, Nike's favorability drops by double digits.
	Before the announcement, Nike had a net plus 69 favourable impression among consumers, and has declined to 34 points to plus 35 favourable.
	You just halved your favorability rating.
	Number two, no boost among key demos.
	Among younger generations, Nike users, African Americans and other key demographics, Nike's favorability declined rather than improved.
	Purchasing consideration also down.
	Before the announcement, 49% of Americans said they were absolutely certain or very likely to buy Nike products.
	And number four, the effect on the NFL seems small for now.
	40% of consumers said that Nike's campaign does not make them more or less likely to watch or attend NFL games.
	21% said more likely and 26% said less likely.
	14% didn't know.
	This favorability breakdown is incredible.
	Before the campaign announcement is in pink and after the campaign announcement is in blue.
	Across all adults they've halved their favourability.
	Even among Nike customers they've lost 15 points of favorability.
	With Republicans they are in the negative.
	With Democrats they've lost 9 points.
	With Generation Z, the key demographic presumably at 18 to 21, they've lost 30 points.
	But incredibly boomers even more so?
	The boomers are furious.
	This was a generally bad idea, Nike.
	I'm sure that a short-term windfall in terms of engaged activists who want to make a statement.
	So a news report can be, look, Nike sales are up.
	That's the narrative being set.
	But is this going to have a good effect for your company long term?
	Was it wise to stitch your colours to this flag?
	Or any flag?
	Because we don't even know that these people necessarily disagree with Kop and Kaepernick.
	The most we can probably divine from this is that people are probably just not happy that you are getting political.
	Before you made a partisan statement, you had really good ratings.
	After you make a partisan statement, you lose ratings with everyone.
	Your purchasing consideration with all groups is down.
	All of them.
	Every group that was absolutely certain or very likely to purchase your products are down.
	This chart shows whether people think that your campaign was appropriate or not.
	25% of people think it's very appropriate.
	14% of people think it's somewhat appropriate.
	27% of people say it's not at all appropriate.
	And 11% of people think it's not too appropriate and will ignore the fence sitters who don't know what's going on.
	That is a pretty even split of what was your consumer base.
	Naturally, most people think this is a publicity stunt.
	Although 32% of people, I guess the die-hard believers, think that this is a way of recognizing Cape and IC's actions.
	And it doesn't just stop with Nike.
	Now a quarter of Americans say they're less likely to watch an NFL game.
	The point is, Nike, if you get woke, you go broke.
	And it's because you are politicizing your product against a part of the consumer base that you have.
	You are making a political statement against these people.
	And naturally, they don't want their clothing suppliers, their shoe manufacturers, to make political statements against them.
	Why would they?
	So naturally, whatever portion of your audience that you have now pissed off for no good reason other than your political bias about a third of your consumer base.
	So if you're doing it for money, that's probably not going to work.
	And if you're doing it for politics, good job by standing for your principles.
	Now let's have a conversation about Black Lives Matter, Nike.
	My door is always open.
	If one of the officials from Nike who's involved with this campaign wants to contact me, I'd be honored to have them on my platform.
	So we can talk about Black Lives Matter and the problems that they are identifying in the United States.
	But you know what?
	I can only do that because I still have a platform.
	Because by some miracle, I haven't been nuked by YouTube and Facebook yet.
	And this week, Jack Dorsey and Cheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, had a Senate hearing.
	One of the most interesting points about this is that Alex Jones was there.
	And you may remember Alex Jones as the wacky conspiracy theorist who says ridiculous things that are mostly not true, but some of them are true.
	And he recently was deplatformed by every major social media outlet bar one, Twitter, with his app still remaining on the Apple Store, but all of his podcasts removed.
	Jones has been at the center of the social media firestorm that has been happening for the past two weeks as these companies demonstrate that they aren't actually accountable to us.
	Twitter was the last social media platform that still allowed Alex Jones to use the service.
	And this was in Jack Dorsey's opinion because Alex had done nothing wrong.
	He apparently hadn't broken the terms of service.
	And Jack Dorsey was definitely not responding to a backlash as a conspiracy in Silicon Valley removes a libertarian fruitcake from their social media platforms, silencing a voice that reached hundreds of millions of people.
	Well, as a result of Alex Jones going to this Senate hearing, he also lost his Twitter account.
	So the question is why did they do it?
	You might think it's because Alex Jones heckled Senator Marco Rubio.
	Marco Rubio and Snake.
	Yeah, sure.
	I swear to God, I'm not afraid of it.
	You better hope you're deplatforming.
	Tens of millions of views.
	InfoWars, InfoWars.
	David and Rush Limbaugh, he knows who InfoWars is, playing this joke over here.
	That's why the deplatforming didn't work.
	But here's the question.
	Here's a question.
	Don't touch me again, man.
	I'm asking you not to touch me.
	Well, sure, I'm just battling you nicely.
	I know, but I don't want to be taught.
	I don't know if you're not going to be able to get arrested.
	I don't know who you are.
	It's not just going to be a problem.
	I'm not going to get arrested.
	I didn't say that.
	I know who I am, but he's so mad.
	You're not going to silence me.
	You're not going to silence me.
	But there are people.
	Marco Rubio was so mad.
	You could see the tension in his body.
	My God.
	And then, if you don't, if you do it again, I'll deal with him myself.
	Oh, he threatened me.
	Oh, that's not what I'm saying.
	Yeah, bullshit, Marco.
	That's exact- What the fuck do you think that means?
	But the idea that Marco Rubio doesn't know who Alex Jones is when he's directly involved in this Senate hearing is amazing.
	If Marco Rubio doesn't know who Alex Jones is, then he doesn't know what the fucking problem is.
	Then he doesn't know what's going on.
	So, you know, you tell Asmarco, either you're talking shit and you do know who Alex Jones is and he just got under your skin, because let's be fair, you probably do want him deplatformed, or you are desperately incompetent and don't know enough about this subject to be speaking on it.
	But no, apparently Twitter didn't ban Alex Jones for that, because apparently that wasn't a bannable offense.
	So it must have been when Alex Jones confronted Jack Dorsey himself, right?
	At some point during the day, this photo was posted to the internet.
	And my god, it looks like a Renaissance painting.
	This is so filled with action, I can hardly stop looking at it.
	I don't know who the tall chap in the middle is, but this is just so great.
	Jack Dorsey's expression of utter focus.
	He knows he needs to be calm and controlled and measured throughout this whole day.
	This is an emotional challenge.
	He knows he's got to sit through that.
	And then on the other side, Alex Jones, finger up, I have a point, while apparently heckling Jack Dorsey and calling him a censor, which Jack, you are, flanked by the media with their phones, a very old-timey watch, a Google glass, and this black cop who has definitely had enough of your shit.
	This photo is like poetry.
	And apparently it was just an off-the-cuff thing.
	The photographer turned around and snapped it.
	So apparently, in anticipation of Dorsey and Sandberg's departure from the state office building, a dozen or so TV cameras had staked out spots near the main entrance.
	Mahasky though noticed Jones heckling reporters in an impromptu press stand near the back door.
	The Infowars host was so busy live streaming his bravado to Periscope, a Twitter-owned property instantly, that he missed Sandberg's exit.
	So he gave chase out to the door but, realizing he was too late, reversed course just as Dorsey appeared.
	The Pizzagate peddler shouted something about censorship at Dorsey.
	I love this kind of subtle bias.
	I mean, it would be more fair to say the Pizzagate peddler shouted something about censorship at the censor.
	But then the Twitter CEO ignored him, and that's about as close to Dorsey as he got, apparently.
	And you would think that Alex Jones shouting about censorship at the CEO of a company that is known for censorship would be the thing that got him bad, but apparently not.
	At least, officially, apparently not.
	Because since the day of unpersoning on the 6th of August 2018, when Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify all removed Alex Jones' content, all in the same day, there has been an absolute clamor from the progressive media to get Alex Jones removed from Twitter.
	Sites like The Verge decided to dig up Alex Jones' Twitter past and then complained when Twitter wouldn't punish him for them.
	Because as far as Twitter were concerned, these were legal posts under the old rules before Twitter was forced to publish new rules that protected everyone from everything all the time.
	And as you can see, The Verge and many other outlets were involved in a sustained campaign to get Alex Jones removed from Twitter.
	This has been going non-stop since he was banned from the other platforms.
	This campaign appears to have been led by CNN's Oliver Darcy, who decided to document some of the unsubstantiated rumors of Alex Jones.
	Taking a tour of Jones' Twitter history, he found 20 attacks on the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting, on the survivors of the Parkland shooting, on gay people, on Muslims, on CNN's Brian Stelter, whom he called, in other things, the literal demon spawn of the pit of hell, a smiling, leering demon, and a degenerate sack of anti-human trash.
	No, no.
	I definitely wouldn't call this guy a leering demon.
	That's a totally uncalled for thing to say about Brian Stelter.
	But in a memo that was eventually made public, Twitter's head of safety, Del Harvey, acknowledged that Jones had sinned in the past.
	Because honestly, that is exactly what this is.
	It's not that he's necessarily done anything legally wrong.
	What he's done is sinned.
	This is how you must not ever act.
	Have you repented?
	No, of course you haven't.
	But you must be sent into purgatory by having your account suspended.
	Apparently, Dorsey won Sean Hannity's praise.
	If we succumb and simply react to outside pressure rather than straightforward principles we enforce and evolve impartially, regardless of political viewpoints, we become a service that is constructed by our personal views that can swing in any direction.
	No kidding.
	Jack, that's what hate speech is.
	The things you consider to be hate speech are your politics.
	They are not neutral.
	The reason that you don't police speech against atheists, Christians, and ex-Muslims is because you don't care about these things because of your politics.
	What you consider to be inappropriate is not impartial.
	But anyway, my discussion with Jack Dorsey's slippery language aside, remember when I said that CNN's Oliver Darcy appears to be heading up the investigation and pressure group on Twitter to ban Alex Jones?
	Well, Alex Jones confronted him.
	Look at this right here.
	The guy that goes around policing and calling for censorship and then claims that Trump's wrong.
	There's no censorship with conservatives or patriots.
	You are incredibly shameful.
	How are you doing, Alex?
	You're just a, look at you.
	Look what you are literally an anti-American, anti-free speech coward.
	You're going to go down to the history books at the Criminal News Network.
	This is one of the main, this is one of the main people right here who thinks you have no memory, who sits there and lobbies.
	Show him.
	That sits there and lobbies people to take other news off, claiming they're fake.
	And CNN is the fakest WMD Gulf Arab state dictatorship funded.
	Unbelievable.
	Hey, come on over here, Drew.
	I want to get this guy on tape.
	This is unbelievable.
	I was literally saying I don't see the criminal news network here, but indeed we do, right there at the front of the line of the trough to try to get in there and try to shut down conservative libertarian speech.
	And of course he comes from the loins of Glenn Beck, the king.
	I mean, look at those eyes, folks.
	If you want to see the eyes of a rat, the no, I mean, seriously, just, I mean, look at the camera.
	Look at those eyes.
	Look at that slobbering to the system and the criminals at CNN, all their warmongering and death, all their fake news, and then running around trying to police the internet and try to shut people down.
	And then you think people are so stupid on CNN a week later and you say no one's censoring anybody.
	No one's pushing for censoring.
	And then you say that Trump is the one attacking the press, but only does it stand up to your lives.
	Just look at this guy's eyes, man.
	That is who will rule your life.
	Him and people like Stelter.
	That is who want to look at that smile.
	Alex, Alex, you know, I'd say, so I've known Oliver quite a long time.
	Good to see you again, Oliver.
	Good to see you, Chuck.
	Good to see you.
	You know, he's from Fresno, and he knows better.
	Because, you know, in Fresno, we actually believe in free speech.
	And here he is censoring people and doing it.
	Policing it.
	He's the thought police.
	That is the thought police.
	Before him, he worked for Zwek Smack.
	And of course, I and many other people in the conservative movement helped this guy's career along.
	And now he's decided that now that he works for CNN, he's going to go and try and shut down voice.
	Look, I mean, he's even more evil looking than Archer.
	So I'm going to think about the decisions that he made.
	Okay, Darcy is clearly not bothered by this.
	In fact, at points, he can't stop himself from smirking.
	And to be honest with you, when I was watching this, I'd stop myself from laughing at the same points because when Alex Jones becomes ridiculous and in character, he is funny.
	He says ridiculous things that make you laugh because you don't expect to hear something so ridiculous.
	The best bit though was when Darcy denied that he had been leading a campaign against Alex Jones to get him censored from Twitter.
	None of what you're saying is true, but I appreciate you asking.
	You are a liar.
	You think you can gaslight people and call for censorship and then a day later say you aren't?
	We've got all your statements, we've got everything.
	We've got you all over the place lobbying to have media taken down.
	That's not true.
	Lobbying to shut people down.
	That's not true.
	Asking people why they're not shut down.
	That's not true.
	Yes, and engaging in all that acting.
	It's all just we have all the clips that you're saying.
	Because, I mean, you're not being censored.
	You're still on Twitter, aren't you?
	You're broadcasting on Twitter right now, I think, right?
	We're on a lot of places.
	Right.
	You're being really silenced.
	Yeah, you've been trying to silence me there.
	You keep asking why I'm there and then lying about what I said.
	I mean, the conversation that he had with Oliver Darcy there, I didn't think constituted abuse or harassment, but apparently it did.
	Apparently, when Jones stated that Darcy had rat eyes, that was enough to get him suspended from Twitter.
	So don't say that to someone.
	Don't tell someone that they're fat or that they're ugly or that you don't like a thing about them because apparently now that is unacceptable.
	Posting a video of him doing that was the problem.
	And that got his Twitter and Periscope accounts cancelled.
	And with Apple then permanently banning the Infowars app from the App Store, the last thing that Infowars had on that platform, that's Alex Jones removed from Silicon Valley, kicked out of the city with the gates closed.
	This is how the moral cartel is working.
	And they've finished their job.
	Alex Jones was the first victim.

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