Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - The Politics of Clown World

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April 9, 2019 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

13:00

The Politics of Clown World

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	Identity politics is the politics of clown world where everything's back to front and yet people believe that this is a sane way forward.
	Let me give you a few examples.
	Failed gubernatorial candidate for Georgia Stacey Abrams said, Identity politics are the politics that win.
	Failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams praised the identity politics of the progressive left as both electorally effective and morally right during a speech at Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network convention in New York on Wednesday.
	Identity politics is nothing more complex than saying, I see you, Abrams said.
	I lean into identity politics.
	I believe in identity politics.
	And I believe identity politics are the politics that win.
	It's very interesting that she would say that as a failed gubernatorial candidate.
	To praise a politics that didn't win as the politics that win is just exactly what you would expect.
	If time had a race, it would be white, says a gender studies professor.
	Brittany Cooper, an associate professor of women and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University, who's outspoken on racial issues, has said that if time itself had a race, it would be white.
	Because white people own time, don't you know?
	She said in a TED talk that typically we talk about race in terms of black and white issues.
	In the African American communities from which I come, we have a long-standing multi-generational joke about what we call CP time or coloured people time.
	Now we no longer refer to African Americans as coloured, but this long-standing joke about our perpetual lateness to church, to cookouts, to family events, and even to our own funerals remains.
	Personally, I'm a stickler for time.
	It's almost as if my mother, when I was growing up, said, We will not be those black people.
	So we typically arrive to events 30 minutes early.
	But today, I want to talk to you more about the political nature of time.
	For if time had a race, it would be white.
	White people own time.
	She goes on to say, This idea that black people have had no impact on history is one of the foundational ideas of white supremacy.
	It's the reason that Carter G. Woodson created Negro History Week in 1926.
	It's the reason we continue to celebrate Black History Month in the US every February.
	Now we also see this idea that black people are people either alternatively outside the bounds of time or stuck in a past scenario, much as I'm doing right now.
	A black person stands up and insists that racism still matters, and a person usually white says to them, Why are you stuck in the past?
	Why can't you move on?
	We have a black president, we're past all that.
	Even when identifying how she is stuck in the past because of her identity politics, she still decides that that's no barrier to blaming this on white people.
	She added that if you're white in the US context, typically you're taught that time is linear, that every day is a progression beyond the past, that we are not today where we were 50 years ago.
	But if you are African American in this country, time doesn't exactly work that way.
	You are, you know, living with the residue of past historical trauma.
	You are living in a present-day system that is filled with racial animus, which often is overlooked by many white Americans.
	And because time is for white people, and not for black people, apparently, that means that you will never escape the past.
	It will always be with you, always be dogging you.
	It will always be on your heels, nipping and snapping, and chasing you forward into nothing but more of the past that was horrifically racial, full of slavery and dreadful oppression, and you will always have that hanging over your head, even if it never happened to you.
	And what this inevitably leads to, of course, is reparations, which is what the Democratic Party are indeed pushing as a major issue coming into the 2020 election.
	Now, 272 people who were not slaves themselves are going to be the beneficiaries of policies that are designed to somehow retroactively deal with oppression that happened 200 years ago by people who did not own any slaves.
	But they're still going to have to pay for it.
	Because we are living in clown world.
	And none of this actually has to make sense.
	There doesn't actually have to be any real, demonstrable harm that has been done to these people.
	All you have to do is believe.
	Because it is our identity as black people to have been oppressed.
	And I would suggest that the worst thing that white Americans could do is rob them of this historical oppression by giving them the reparations they want.
	But why shouldn't we carry on down the road of identity politics?
	I mean, how much more ridiculous could things get?
	Well, you could have a Jewish Republican accusing a Muslim Democrat of anti-Semitism as she simultaneously accuses him of Islamophobia.
	And why not?
	It's all completely internally consistent with the logic of identity politics.
	I mean, this is going to be an issue that's resolved soon.
	I'm sure that both sides will make concessions on this.
	They'll say, yes, maybe I am anti-Semitic.
	Yes, maybe I am Islamophobic.
	Maybe there's something we could do to talk about this together.
	Or it could be that both sides will just flatly deny the other's allegations and carry on as if nothing happened.
	A Twitter spat between New York Representative Lee Zeldin and Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar appeared to conclude at about midnight Friday after a work week back and forth of accusations between the two lawmakers of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
	Omar, who is a Muslim, invited Zeldin, who is Jewish, to meet with her in her office over Somali tea to share notes on how to fight religious discrimination of all kinds.
	The heated Twitter exchange began after Omar felt a tweet by Zeldin was an Islamophobic dog whistle and crested when Zeldin challenged Omar to condemn a voicemail left in his office by an unidentified caller who derided him, unironically, as a Nazi Jew.
	Terribly worthwhile conversation to be having, isn't it?
	Nazi Jews.
	They're just everywhere.
	Apparently Stephen Miller is also a Nazi Jew.
	No questions about it.
	But it's okay, it's not just Mr. Zeldin who is a victim of racial prejudice, I guess.
	Omar has previously said that the voicemail was heinous and hideous, and that her office, too, is flooded with bigoted voicemails and calls every day.
	Because everyone's a victim.
	Everyone gets to be a victim under the new regime of identity politics.
	I mean you could be a Muslim woman of colour who simply doesn't date white men because you know, they're white men.
	Why don't you date white men?
	Is it a political decision or is it about attraction?
	I shifted uncomfortably, choosing my words carefully.
	Well yes, it started out as a political decision, but it has manifested into preference.
	I really find brown men incredibly attractive now.
	I just don't find white men that attractive anymore.
	So it was a political choice, which is strange, but okay.
	It's one thing to say, well look, I'm not going to date any white men because of my racial politics.
	It's another thing to be in a relationship with a white woman and then discover racial politics.
	But that is precisely what one contributor to the New York Times found.
	I broke up with her because she's white.
	It's been a year since I broke up with my girlfriend and I haven't told her the real reason.
	I talked around it mumbling about how I was trying to figure out who I was or whatever.
	She didn't understand.
	I'm not sure I do either.
	There was nothing wrong with her at all.
	I don't really know what my tipping point was.
	It just kind of happened.
	At 30, I woke up one day, took a deep breath, looked at her and thought, I don't think I can date white women anymore.
	Maybe I wouldn't have broken up with her if it hadn't been for all the judgment coming my way.
	Over the years I've dated brown women and black women, but mostly white women.
	I hadn't thought about why that was, but when some brown and black people in my community started giving me a hard time about dating white women, I sensed they'd be happier if I stopped.
	I see people watching me with a stink eye, noses turned up, as if they think black and brown people would somehow be better off if I dumped my white girlfriend.
	It's a lot of pressure.
	Along with each watchful eye, the whispers of, pick a ski, Chris, pick a sill my already noisy mind.
	I started reading James Baldwin, Tanashi Coates, and other black and brown authors, looking for guidance, a roadmap, help on what it means to be a brown man in the world.
	Like, yes, our bodies have been colonized.
	Yes, I am a child of blackness.
	Yes, the black body has done more for society than it has gotten in return.
	Yes, society seems to want to embrace a lot of things associated with blackness without actually being black.
	How did we get here?
	If everyone is so woke, why are things so terrible?
	Maybe everyone isn't so woke.
	Anyway, what am I supposed to do?
	How do I love as a brown body in the world in a way that makes everybody happy?
	I fell for a white woman and she fell for me, simple as that.
	Yet I feel as if I'm doing the wrong thing by dating her.
	It's one thing being politically adverse to dating someone of another race, but I think it's another to watch identity politics ruin a perfectly good relationship with which you were happy, with a person that you loved.
	You woke up one day and decided they are actually the wrong race, and I cannot date them anymore.
	Because identity politics is a clown world where everything is back to front.
	And it goes for everything.
	I mean, in one remarkable twist of fate, a black man became the head of a neo-Nazi group that he had intended to destroy.
	Because of a civil suit by convicted murderer James Alex Fields, the man who murdered Heather Hayer at Charlottesville, James Stern, a black man, was appointed to be the president of the group in order to protect the membership from the ongoing lawsuit.
	It's completely bizarre, said the Southern Poverty Law Center, adding that the white nationalists both in and out of the group were completely blindsided by the change in leadership.
	No kidding!
	It would be quite bizarre to see a black man at the head of a neo-Nazi group.
	But now, that's the case.
	And really, it wouldn't be bizarre in any other kind of group to see a black person at the head of it.
	But because this group is exclusively based on identity politics, once again, we have arrived in clown world, where black people are the head of white supremacist organizations.
	But at least these are things that matter.
	I mean, you can at least say these things have impact and gravity in the world.
	They matter to people's lives.
	But there is nothing in the clown world of identity politics that doesn't end in absolutely petty bullshit.
	For example, today we found that Waitrose, a popular supermarket in the United Kingdom with the middle to upper classes, has apologised and pulled racist Easter chocolate from the shelves.
	Why?
	Because they had a trio of Easter ducklings.
	One was crispy, one was fluffy, and one was ugly.
	You've already figured out why this is racist.
	The ugly one is a dark chocolate duckling.
	That basically means that it's black.
	And that's basically calling black people ugly.
	One social media user wrote, crispy, fluffy, and ugly.
	Trio of Easter ducklings at Waitrose.
	Ugly is the dark one on the right.
	Overheard women saying, this is not right.
	I agree, it doesn't look good at all.
	Thousands of other options, why ugly?
	But the reason that this is even a story is because there is no end to this.
	Once you view everything through a racial identitarian lens, the world becomes upside down.
	And everyone is primed to be on the lookout for racial grievances, no matter how petty or, in and of themselves, racist.
	Take for example the opinion of this intersectional activist teacher.
	Unpopular opinion, English teacher edition.
	Worship of the written word is a tenet of white supremacy.
	It's a very sensible thing to say.
	I mean, there are some cultures that never even developed the written word.
	Are you saying you're better than them?
	I am just looking at left-wing identitarianism here.
	It is entirely possible to do exactly the same thing for right-wing identitarianism.
	The actual Nazi groups who are interested in sticking up for white identity rights.
	They also have their own narrative of victimhood that puts the world back to front.
	Identity politics is the ouroboros of politics.
	There is no end to it.
	So be careful when you take your first step onto that road.

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