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Sept. 23, 2018 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
10:57
Thoughts on Mythcon V and What's Next
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Hey everyone, I just thought I'd give you a rundown of my thoughts on MythCon 5, which was really good.
And before I say anything, man, just massive shout to the guys who organised it.
Dimitri, Sean, Fritz, and Brian.
There are probably others, but these are the guys I'm familiar with.
They are all just the nicest guys, and like, there's no egos with any of them.
You know, they just get the job done.
And, you know, it's a huge success.
Loads of people there, like, loads of YouTubers there who hadn't met, who were all really nice.
Everyone was lovely there.
You know, and it's so weird that people didn't seem to be very ego-driven while they're in each other's company.
It's amazing how that works, right?
But yeah, everyone's really nice.
You know, the sort of like after-party and the pre-party.
I went to these both, but I went to bed early both times.
For the pre-party when I wanted to be fresh for the debate with Carrier, and the after-party, because there are loads of people there, loads of people who want to talk to me and they want to tell me their story.
Everyone's got an individual story on how they arrived at the alternative influencer network.
I like that term.
It's easy to use, you know.
And I love hearing all these stories because it's always different, you know?
And they'll tell you about their journey and what they think and stuff.
I mean, there are people there who disagree with me, and that's fine.
I'm more than happy to have a disagreement with someone.
But yeah, so I had to go to bed about midnight again because it's lovely seeing everyone, but it's always really tiring.
And it's just because you're on for four or five hours or something, and you're talking to loads of people.
And you don't want people to not, you don't want to not, you don't want to not talk to people because you know they've made the effort to come all the way to see, you know, they'll say, oh, I'm from this place or that place.
And it's like, Christ, I'm glad I took the time, you know.
But yeah, with the debate with Carrier, it was really frustrating because he basically absconded and just repudiated social justice, the ideology of intersectional social justice, on the stage, going, oh, I don't believe in any of this.
It's like, okay, well, how are we here?
It was frustrating that he was, you know, like, I mean, we interrupted each other, and I interrupted, I accused him of interrupting me, and I'm sure I was just as bad.
So, you know, I apologise for that.
But I also, I'd like to apologise to Carrie for being so hard on him.
You know, I felt like I was a lot more aggressive than I needed to be, and I felt bad about that.
You know, I really, I really felt bad about that.
I didn't, I, I, it took us about half of the damn debate just to get to the point where he was clear that he wasn't a supporter of social justice.
He kept using the word, but instead of meaning the ideology that's coming out of academia, the far-left radical post-modernist ideology, which are things that he didn't seem to know much about, he was using the term as the consequential effect of social justice, and using any kind of charity work or aid to mean social justice.
So basically he'd redefined all these things.
And so when I asked him to define racism, he didn't say power plus prejudice.
He just gave the standard definition of racism that we all are actually familiar with.
And I was like, right, okay, well, I mean, I believe that you don't believe these things, but what are we doing here?
I thought we were here to discuss the intersection of social justice and atheism, which means we're going to have to discuss why social justice destroyed the atheist community.
And since he was one of the people who was primarily involved in that, he was the one championing Atheism Plus.
You'd think he'd be prepared to do that, but he wasn't.
completely just left the position and so I just it was frustrating And I guess that made me more mean than I needed to be.
So don't give Carrie a hell or anything.
He's not a bad guy.
And again, Dolph Carrier, I'm sorry.
I should have been kinder.
I really should.
But the points I made, they were good.
They were good points.
Very happy with the points.
It's just a shame the context.
They weren't really that useful because there wasn't anyone on the other side of them.
Which is really frustrating.
But yeah, the arguments I was making were, I think, were quite good.
And I was very pleased with them.
Worked very hard on them.
But it turns out that Carrier is effectively effectively a liberal.
I mean, okay, a progressive, I would call him.
I call him on the stage to distinguish him from the intersectional social justice warriors because he's not arguing for deplatforming.
And the reason I do this and say this, so a lot of people would probably say, oh, well, he was just lying for the situation to win the argument there.
And then I don't agree.
I mean, he didn't win the argument.
He just avoided it.
And the reason that I say all this is because previously, Carrier is one of the only ones of the, like, you know, the little sort of intersectional YouTube free thought blog sort of style crew who actually ever took the time to actually defend me.
I mean, he has written articles.
I mean, they're not flattering articles towards me, obviously, but defending allegations of me being a Nazi and things like this.
And it's just like, you know, like, he's not, you know, that's why I think this is worth the time to make this video to apologise to him.
Because I really could have been kinder and I really should have been kinder.
And I think it's something I'm going to be more mindful of.
But yeah, I mean, the thing is, a lot of people are like, oh, it was really entertaining.
So, I mean, it'll be entertaining.
But it wasn't the discussion I wanted to have.
And I found it frustrating.
And honestly, that's the second year now that wasn't the discussion I wanted to have.
And I found it frustrating.
And we just can't seem to bring any of the people who we actually need to have these conversations with to the mat.
And so I feel kind of blue-balled, to be honest.
But again, Carrier's not a bad guy.
He, well, like, from my experience with him.
And I agree that he's not.
I mean, he might have been once, but I don't think he is now.
I think he's been burned by the social justice warriors themselves enough to know that that's not a productive course of...
There's no productive future there.
You're not going to get any real work done.
You're only going to get chewed out by these people as they continue to infiltrate and infest our institutions.
He was definitely in denial about the scope of the problem.
Like, try and explain to him, look, dude, this is a huge industry.
You know, every industry has diversity officers and they're all pumping this out.
And he was just like, well, I don't know.
I mean, he's kind of accused himself of all of this.
It's like, okay.
But again, like, why are we here?
And really, I think the main reason is because the MythCon guys, they just can't seem to get an intersectional advocate to come up and actually argue the case.
Which is just so frustrating.
But I mean, Angela Nagel, who, the author of Kill All Normans, it's a good book, actually.
It's surprisingly accurate.
I thought it was going to be full of greater misrepresentations than it is.
So it's actually worth your time.
I got the audio book of it and listened to it a couple of times.
This is only four hours, four and a half hours long.
So it's not a very thick book or anything.
It's probably worth your time, to be honest.
But yeah, so I'm going to have to go catch a plane now.
And again, just feeling kind of frustrated.
I don't feel that I achieved the goal I was setting out to achieve.
But there's always...
In fact, no, I don't think they're doing it up next year.
I think they're doing some sort of touring schedule or something, which actually I think is better.
Because I think one of the main problems is being stuck in Milwaukee.
It's not that Milwaukee isn't a lovely city with lovely people.
It is.
There's a huge like redevelopment initiative going on.
But it's out of the way.
It's not in one of the major cities.
You'd expect New York, Austin, LA, something like that.
Milwaukee seems like a bit of an odd choice.
But I think it's because it's local for the guys rather than anything else.
But sorry, this turned into a real ramble, didn't it?
But yeah, again, just to say, you know, I didn't, I mean, it was great seeing everyone.
It was really nice meeting everyone.
And there were some really cool people there.
I'll still upload the things to my channel so you can see what I mean.
Like, because like I said, the arguments are still sound.
Just not happy with my demeanor.
I was too rough.
I shouldn't have been.
I should have been more nice.
I don't know why I was like, I guess I still felt like the underdog.
And I felt like I had something to prove.
And then about halfway through, I was just like, shares.
You know, it's not that I'm the underdog, because Carrie's the underdog.
And I'm kind of kicking him.
And I felt bad.
You know, I felt really sh I felt ashamed of myself a bit.
You know, it's like, so, like, and you know, I'm rambling.
But, so, yeah, this is just some thoughts on it.
But I tell you, all the other panels I saw were really good, really productive as well.
And props to Mike Rowlands and Chrissy Ostee as well for turning up.
And they, they act, and this is another thing, they actually defended intersectionality.
So whether you agree with it or not, at least they had the balls to come and fight in their own corner and support their own advocacy and stand by the things that they claim to stand by.
I found that really respectable, even if I totally disagree with them.
You know, I mean, I was watching their panel on intersectionality and I was sat thinking, God, I wish I was on that.
You know, because these guys would have actually, we could have gone through the ideology in detail.
Because every time I propose something ideological about intersectional social justice to discuss, Carrie would be like, oh, I don't agree with that.
It's like for fuck's sake.
What about these people?
Oh, I don't agree with them.
It's like, oh, God, okay.
It's frustrating.
But no, but seriously, Chris Eusti and Mike Rowlands did really well.
And then at the end of it, oh, God, like, Rocket decided to do a roast of me with that Sargon song that he's written.
And my mum's undoubtedly going to love it.
My mum will love this because she loves this song.
But yeah, so he was just kind of roasting me.
But it was fine.
I don't mind being roasted.
But it was so nice.
Everyone was having a really great time as far as I could see.
And Shu and Skeptic are engaged.
And the MythCon guys got them like a scrapbook that everyone signed.
Which was a really sweet thing, man.
So it was cool.
And again, like, you know, it's always a it's always a place to do these things.
But the quest continues.
One day, one day, we'll be able to sit down with someone who genuinely believes these things and we can actually hammer it out.
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