Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - The Challenges Ahead (#UKIPNORTHERNTOUR)

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Feb. 18, 2019 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

14:05

The Challenges Ahead (#UKIPNORTHERNTOUR)

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	It's my turn and my privilege to introduce the next speaker who actually from the applause he got earlier he doesn't really need me to introduce him at all.
	His name is Carl Benjamin, also known as YouTuber, so I've got a back out of time.
	Ladies and gentlemen.
	I hope you can be all well.
	So I was going to come up here and whine to you about the EU for a while, but to be honest with you, I think we're all on the same page with that.
	So what I thought I'd do is address some of the things that Paul Richardson said in his speech, because I think it was very brave of him to come up and speak to an audience that he is in direct opposition to and gave him some heckling as we all saw.
	But I also think it's really impressive that we'd have a critic up to speak and to tell us why they think we're not doing a good job.
	Because it's really hard to imagine a Labour or Conservative gathering doing the same thing.
	So and the thing is I think that it's not that he has illegitimate concerns either.
	The points that he's raising are valid points and we should address them.
	So the main point as I took it was that the perception of UKIP as the political party that it is and the fact that it did very badly in the polls following the Brexit referendum.
	Now to me, what that says is, the public widely perceive UKIP to be a single issue party about Brexit and, to be honest with you, it's in the name UK Independence Party.
	Of course, that's what people think, but I also agree that another people have made this point that we absolutely need to become a multi-issue party and clearly one of those issues is going to have to be Islam, because at the moment, the variant of Islam that we have proliferating very successfully in this country is primarily Diabandi.
	About half of our mosques are run by the Diabandi.
	Now if you don't know anything about the Diabandi sect of Islam you're in for a bit of a shock because it was founded to be an explicitly anti-British version of Islam, a fundamentalist version.
	And it's apparently the version that the Taliban hold to.
	Now that's not to suggest that everyone who is a Diabandi Muslim is a part of the Taliban or anything of the sort.
	But what I'm trying to show you is it's very fundamentalist and that's why you see the expression of it as it is.
	The men in, well, I can't remember the name of the dress, but the women in the Ka'bs and whatnot.
	And Thobes, thank you.
	And this is a very, very, I would consider backwards interpretation of Islam.
	But it's obviously not the only one.
	But we allow it to proliferate because many of our migrants who have come here have come from Pakistan, which is a Diaband country.
	Now, it's not a commentary on the people themselves, but we do have to have some kind of commentary on the ideology because the ideology is, as we have all seen, not really very compatible with what we consider sort of British liberal values.
	Now, I think that one of the other things I want to take exception to as well is the idea that the grooming gang phenomenon has no connection to this religion.
	It does.
	There's simply no question of it.
	And we can see very clearly from the scriptures how they're being interpreted, how this connection is.
	Now, I mean, for example, the grooming gangs themselves, when they're in courts, you can read the reporting on the cases, and they'll say that they viewed them as worthless white trash.
	Exactly, scum, but it's because these women weren't modest, they weren't decent, and they weren't integrated into their own communities.
	So often these people come from broken homes.
	These people don't have people looking out for them and they're easy prey.
	And if you're a Muslim man who thinks that a woman who does not dress according to Islamic modesty standards is essentially fair game, then you find yourself, I suppose, with less reasons, not so, well, you find yourself with more reasons to be able to justify what it is you go and do to that person.
	And I think that when you say, when Paul said that was not religious but criminal, I mean, that just doesn't make sense.
	No one goes out with the desire to commit a criminal act for the sake of committing crimes.
	They go out and commit an act for the sake of something else that happens to have been criminalized.
	Otherwise, what we're saying with that is that these Muslim grooming gangs were just as likely to break into someone's house and steal their TV if the aim was just to be a criminal.
	It's not.
	It was obviously to fulfill a kind of sexual desire.
	And they've obviously chosen their victims based on religious lines, which is why it didn't happen to Muslim girls.
	It happened to Sikh girls, it happened to Hindu girls, it happened to British girls, but it wasn't to Muslim girls.
	The next thing is the idea that this is a cultural practice that can be somehow separated from the religion itself.
	I don't agree.
	I think that the religion itself is something that is like it's in it's so closely tied to the cultural practices of these regions that I just don't think it's something you can separate.
	It's not that it can't change, it absolutely can, but it won't change unless we have the fortitude to have these kind of conversations.
	Because there is no doubt that this does come from a religious inspiration.
	I mean, the very nature of it from their own words is justified using an appeal to Islamic modesty standards.
	Well, that's straight from the Quran.
	So if that's not Islamic, what is?
	The next thing I'd like to address is the phrase alt-right.
	And I suppose this goes back to the perception of UKIP in the media.
	The media lie a lot.
	As someone who has been lied about a lot by the media, I can tell you exactly how.
	For example, the Associated Press have a list, you know, a set of standards by which most of the press accept that these are legitimate journalistic standards.
	And they have a definition for the alt-right.
	They're fascists.
	They're white supremacists.
	They are the people who we can actually call Nazis.
	They don't like Jews.
	They don't like non-white people.
	They only like white people.
	And they only like white people as long as they're doing what they want them to do.
	I'm not even, I'm partially mixed race, so I'm not really interested in being a white supremacist.
	I consider myself to be a British liberal, which I consider to be the very opposite of fascism.
	I consider it to be the very opposite of Nazism.
	I personally just don't care about your race.
	It's just not a subject I have an opinion on.
	I care about the thoughts in your head because they can be changed through dialogue.
	And on the subject of dialogue, although this wasn't mentioned in his speech, I think that one of the things that UKIP really needs to, I mean, honestly, it's the only party that is taking any of this by the reins is free speech.
	We have a real problem with the way that we talk to the way we're able to talk to one another.
	Now, it's not always pretty what people will say to one another.
	But I don't think the government should be able to criminalise you for having an opinion, no matter how offensive it is.
	But it isn't just for your own personal protection from the state that free speech is important.
	Although it is, and this is why we consider it to be one of our fundamental human rights.
	The most important thing is what it facilitates, because if we can't raise the objections that we want to raise, regardless of how other people feel about them, then we can't raise them at all.
	And it's only in the raising of these objections, even if people's feelings are hurt, that they're prepared to take on board that they maybe are doing something that the people around them object to.
	It's a social mechanism by which society does end up changing.
	And what free speech, what anti-free speech laws do, or hate speech laws do, is effectively box off every particular grouping that the particular progressive hand has to hand in the forefront of the mind.
	For example, a Muslim, a black person, whatever the grouping they want is.
	But what they effectively do is turn them into armed camps against one another and say, right, if anyone from camp A says anything about camp B along these particular lines, then you have a legal case.
	Then we're going to come down on like a ton of bricks.
	Which means they're constantly wary of one another.
	Now we are suspicious of our own neighbours.
	And we have to very carefully police our own words around people who otherwise might not really have thought very deeply about all this, but suddenly have a grievance against you if you are caught saying the wrong thing at the wrong time on social media, on camera, wherever.
	Change is not a one-way street.
	There's no doubting that Islam is going to be a part of the United Kingdom now.
	That's unfortunately the reason.
	I say unfortunately because I'm not a fan of Islam as a philosophy, as a worldview.
	I'm an atheist.
	I don't believe in God.
	I don't believe that anything that comes from the Quran has any kind of moral legitimacy because of that.
	But that doesn't mean I get to take other people's religion away from them.
	However, it does mean that I get to tell anyone, and this goes for any of you, but in particular, I suppose, heavily religious Muslims, that I am prepared to accept a certain kind of behavioral pattern from you that I think is, you know, what I consider to be a respectable way of behaving.
	And of course, they'll have the same requirements of me.
	And we should have that dialogue.
	We should be able to have that conversation.
	and we will negotiate it between one another without the state getting involved.
	I was born here, I don't want to change.
	I appreciate that, right?
	No, no, hang on.
	I appreciate what you're saying, right?
	But you do change.
	Okay, listen, listen.
	I'm not arguing that point with you, right?
	I'm not arguing that point.
	What I'm saying is things always change.
	Everything changes.
	Just your very being here is a change from before you even knew what Islam was.
	You have changed, and they will change too.
	Change is just an inevitable part of life.
	There's no getting rid of it.
	Listen, I'm not arguing against that.
	I'm not saying that the English should stop being English.
	I actually think that there should be some kind of understanding of the moral good of the English identity because the English identity is based around effectively a set of ideas, a set of ideals.
	And there's nothing wrong with it.
	And I want to see English Muslims.
	I want to see this identity pushed.
	But that doesn't mean it won't change because you change all the time.
	Everything changes, right?
	That's not true.
	That's not true.
	Listen, there would be no Diabandi sect of Islam if Islam didn't change.
	They created this school of Islam in response to the changes that we were imposing on them.
	Things always change.
	The alternative is frankly something that will never be considered.
	And it will honestly lead us down a dark path.
	And I don't want to get over.
	I am being realistic.
	I'm being very realistic.
	But the thing is, these things can all change.
	Getting back to the things I want to talk about.
	In fact, this is, in fact, coming back to the last thing, the only way that the integration of the Muslim community is ever going to happen.
	And I think that the only option is to make sure that they understand that they are British first and Muslims second.
	Because I think the privacy, the question of our age is the question of identity.
	What are we?
	What are you?
	Who are you?
	Who are these people?
	How do we end up living together with one another?
	There's no choice.
	We really don't have a choice about that.
	But this is why I say that they have to change as well.
	But I mean, any changes are always mutual.
	There's just no choice on the matter.
	You can't stop it from happening.
	Well, who?
	Well, no, no.
	Listen, right?
	No, I agree.
	There are absolutely a subset of the sort of more radical Islamist types who have come to take over.
	I mean, look at the Trojan horse scandal and things like this.
	They will go out of their way to be openly deceptive and manipulative.
	Absolutely.
	But that doesn't mean that we can just pathologize all Muslims with this brush.
	We can't say you're all the same and you all have to be treated like this because they're not all the same.
	You won't let them go to 20 years.
	Okay, well, I'll tell you, I'll talk.
	I will talk to you about it afterwards.
	Unfortunately, I'm running out of time.
	But I'll talk to you about it afterwards.
	There will be an option for questions and answers later.
	But let's just listen to the topic and it says let's move on.
	Sorry.
	Yeah, I appreciate this annoying, but the thing is, unfortunately, we're trapped within a political reality and we have to operate with this.
	There'll be questions and answers afterwards.
	Can we please keep doing this?
	Since I'm at the end of the time now, I suppose what I would suggest is that the first issue that UKIP really have to take by the horns is going to have to be political correctness.
	This is the weapon by which they ostracize you from the conversation on the subjects that you want to have an input in.
	So that's, yeah, exactly.
	It's anathematizing people for wrong thing.

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