All Episodes
Previous Next
April 25, 2019 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
41:57
Carl Benjamin Sky News Interview with Katie McCann (Full)
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Okay.
You happy with the mics and stuff?
Yep, we're all.
Brilliant.
So if I could just get you to give me your full name and your title as a UKIP candidate to start off with.
My name is Karl Benjamin.
I'm running as an MEP for the South West of England.
So Carl, you and I met previously.
What has the reaction been since UKIP's launch of the campaign and the reaction to you deciding to run as a candidate?
Um, wildly positive, as far as I can see.
Depends who you ask, obviously.
But yeah, everyone who supports me seems very happy that I'm doing it.
They seem very happy that I'm getting off the internet, off my couch and trying to make something of myself.
And how's campaigning been so far?
Really fun, really fun, it's been quite exciting.
We've had a few, I guess I call them radical leftists who came out to try and disrupt our event in Bristol, I think, yesterday, where we just sit there with a table, two chairs, microphones like this, in fact, and just record long-form conversations about whatever issues people talk about because you had i think you had some did you have a run-in in bristol where a couple of your venues cancelled or because they were worried about No, what we're doing is we're doing town centre protests.
It's not, you know, I want anyone to be able to come up and speak to us and see us.
But the radical leftists, afterwards we were going to go to a pub and just sit down with people who came to see us and have a few beers, have something to eat.
And the anti-far types were harassing the venues and they were getting a bit afraid for their own staff because of this harassment.
And so we decided to go somewhere that we hadn't announced since we were there with everyone because we didn't want these people turning up and smashing windows, checking bricks, hitting people, things like this, which is they've got a long history of doing stuff like that.
So tell me why did you decide to stand as a candidate for UKIP?
Because I'm really not very pleased with the way things are going.
I don't see myself as like the ideal candidate, which I'm sure you can tell by my internet history.
But I think that it is imperative that people who actually stand for certain values actually stand up and make themselves counted at this point because we're at a point where things are really going off the rails.
We're plastering over all the cracks, but the cracks keep getting bigger.
And the real problem is the foundations of our moral order that are the problem, because they've been kind of hijacked by a certain kind of press class from London.
And this press class is acting as a series of gatekeepers to try and shut out those people who are the undesirables, much like myself, who are raising the alarm on certain issues because things are getting worse and not better.
I think we really have to talk about it now.
What do you mean by undesirable?
People who don't fit a certain kind of culture, shall we say.
A certain kind of culture that's been bred around Westminster.
It's very class conscious culture.
It's very interested in what your background is, where you went to school, what your bloodline is.
I don't have a prestigious bloodline.
I didn't go to a prestigious school.
I'm the child of a RAF sergeant.
So I'm just one of the lowly plebs.
But I've grown a kind of a big presence online outside of the shadow of the mainstream.
And I think that a lot of people in the mainstream in the sort of Westminster bubble are really offended by this because I think this is a threat to their sort of control over what's published in the public eye.
Why did you choose UKIP specifically as a party?
Because UKIP are the only party that have the correct moral foundations.
And what does that mean?
That means they think that this country is fundamentally a good idea.
Gerard Batten, when I spoke to him and I asked him about some of the remarks that you've referenced, some of the controversial things that you've said before, he said that one of the reasons why he's happy for you to be a candidate is because you have a huge social media presence.
Are you worried that the party is using that, is using your platform, and that's why they want you as a candidate?
I should hope they're using my platform, that's what it's there for.
They didn't come to us, we went at them.
Because we, the YouTubers, me, Mark Meachin and Paul Joseph Watson, who joined, we're very tired of sitting on the sidelines and we feel that we are not being represented by modern politics.
And I think a lot of people feel that way.
And I think it's because the standards for entry are so high that some communities just don't get any representation at all, especially with the first part of the post-voting system.
So no, I'm very glad that they see the help that we can give them.
They're very happy to stand by us because of it.
Is this UKIP trying to appeal to a new set of voters then?
Well, I imagine that UKIP are just trying to appeal to anyone who thinks that, like I said, the country is a good thing and has good common sense and want to sort of cease the kind of degradation of the country that we're seeing before our eyes.
But you clearly feel that the political parties that are already operating in Westminster aren't really appealing to those groups of people.
They're the cause of the problem.
Explain that for me.
The established order, the current two-party system with the Liberal Democrats wandering around the edges, are the cause of the problems in this country.
I mean, it couldn't be any other way, obviously.
They're the ones running the country.
Who else would be the ones messing it up?
Okay, so you've chosen to run for UKIP.
You're a candidate for their EU election team, but you have run into some criticism and you've acknowledged it yourself.
Do you think that that's been fair?
Not really.
I mean, I'm an anti-political correctness YouTube entertainer.
So the idea of like, oh, you said this four years ago or something like this.
I mean, this kind of Twitter necromancy.
It's pointless.
I mean, you're not asking me about any of the things I believe, any of my values, any of the things that I would do if I was given a platform, if I managed to win the election.
This is the gatekeeping inaction.
I mean, who cares about a three-year-old tweet or a four-year-old tweet?
No one cares.
It's not something that the regular person spends their night worrying about, but they do spend their night worrying about various other issues that I really think need to be discussed.
And that's what I'm here to do.
I'm going to make sure that the conversation is pushed forward on these issues.
Brexit, obviously, being number one in the current environment, but there are many others that none of the other parties have got the fortitude to tackle and would rather hide behind the shield of political correctness and media instead of actually address these criticisms.
I'm happy to talk about some of those issues, but I think that people do care actually about who represents them.
And I think you've seen that.
The Conservative Party have had questions asked about their candidates.
Change UK have had the same yesterday and today.
The Labour Party has certainly had to go through a process of addressing some of those issues.
So I think it is important to talk about the comments they've made.
Who was raising those issues?
In what sense?
Who was raising those issues to those parties?
Well, they've been raised by a number of different campaign groups, by journalists, by other politicians, by people who are not.
Not by the regular people who are busy voting.
Well, they have been raised by people on Twitter and in internet forums and actually that write into newspapers and contact journalists.
So they have been raised by voters.
But let's discuss some of those comments that you've made in the past and you and I have discussed them.
I'm not really interested in discussing any of these comments because you see, I've had something like 400 million views on my YouTube channels in total.
I've got a huge audience that if people want to go see them they can go watch them on my channel and see the context for them for themselves.
So I'm not really interested in discussing any of those.
But I'm happy to talk about the real issues, the real substance of the meat of the thing that we need to actually talk about.
I'm happy to do that.
That's fair enough.
And I would like to talk to you about those things.
But I also think it's really important as a journalist, if we are going to talk in the context of remarks that you've made previously, for you to be able to have a response to those and for you to say, if you would like to, that you explain them and that you would like to political correctness entertainer.
Now, I have to be entertaining and I have to be provocative.
So I have to say interesting things in an entertaining way that gets people thinking.
And here we are.
So I must have been successful.
And that's literally the only explanation I'm going to give you on that.
But I would love to talk about the real issues.
There's one particular case that I would like to put to you.
If only humour me just to satisfy my understanding.
I'm afraid I'm not going to humour you anymore.
I'm really sorry.
But I've had this discussion with many different journalists now, many different outlets, and I do have to stress that this is literally a pathology that you guys care about.
If I put out a video four years ago and said something you didn't like, well, I'm sorry.
If I put out tweets four years ago and said something you like, I don't care.
I want to talk about the issues.
I'm not here to talk about what I've said that is a crime against political correctness.
I hate political correctness.
But how do voters, if they want to know about you and your views, how do they confirm what your views currently are and decide whether they would like to vote for you if I'm not able to ask you about those views?
Did I not say that I've had hundreds of millions of views on my YouTube channel?
They can just type into Google Sargon of a CAD and they'll find my channel and they can watch for themselves.
But there have been particular comments about a disabled child.
Is this the third time we're going to talk about something offensive I've said?
Well, I would like to be able to talk to you about it because I think the reason I think it's important is that you are standing for election in a democratic society.
And if you were a Labour candidate or a Change UK candidate or a Conservative candidate, I would put exactly the same question to them.
And I would do that because I think it's important for voters to know and understand who they're voting for.
And it's also important for journalists to hold themselves to account when they're reporting.
So part of what I'm doing is being able to give you the chance to explain your views.
Okay, so I'm not a Labour candidate or a Change UK candidate or a Conservative candidate.
I'm a UKIP candidate.
I'm a regular person.
I've said lots of things in the past that are jokes, are satire, are irony laden and honestly, I don't think you are keyed into internet culture enough to really understand it.
And it's not your fault, it's its own kind of culture, just like Westminster.
It's its own kind of culture.
But I'm not going to explain myself.
It's all out there on the internet.
I haven't deleted a thing.
It's all there.
People can go and watch everything I've said in context.
And there's hundreds and hundreds of hours, thousands of videos I've made over the last six years.
And they can go and watch all of that.
So your position, I suppose, is that you, because everything is still out there, you basically are happy for that to stand as your record.
That's what people could read from that.
But like I said, it's all in the context of me being an anti-political correctness political entertainer on the internet.
So when you say, when you talk over a video of a disabled child saying, don't call me a retard, and you call the child a retard, you're happy for that to stand as your record.
Well, you've taken that out of the context that it was put in, so people don't know why that was done.
And that's why I'm not going to answer these questions, because I'm not going to have things taken out of context from years ago when people could just go back and watch it and see the context.
I mean, I'm not doing that without a reason.
But like I said, it's all difficult to explain out of the context.
It's all heavily laden in irony.
There is a meta point overarching what's happening.
And the very use of that language itself is to provoke people like you.
it's all self-conscious it's all self-aware and people can go and watch it on the internet for themselves well what i what i actually wanted to do and the reason why the ipad is here is i wanted to show you the clip in the context so that people who are watching i'm not going to talk I'm not.
That's fine, and I'm not going to show you the clip, but I want to explain to you that actually I have the clip.
Whether I am or I am not offended is not the point.
The point is, I have the clip, and I would have liked to have shown you it in the context.
Let me ask you a question.
Let me ask you a question.
To talk about the full context of the question.
Let me ask you a question.
This is simple, because this comes down to, again, once again, like your personal bias.
Because what this reeks off to me is class privilege.
To me, this is an absolute non-issue, and I think to most voters, this is an absolute non-issue.
This is the gatekeeping mechanism in process, right?
You're not here to talk about my ideas for the welfare state or to the NHS or how we could manage Brexit better or why identity politics is a particularly dangerous thing.
We have lots of questions on this.
Well, I'll tell you what, how about if we move on to those questions, then perhaps if you feel that we've answered those questions, then perhaps at the end I can ask you the question.
Let's just see how we get to that.
Okay, we'll see how we go.
But the thing is, right, I'm not interested in mollifying the hurt feelings of the elite classes.
I'm not really interested in the sort of gatekeeping mechanisms you're doing.
Now, if you want a good faith interview with me, I'm happy to talk about any of my ideas, because I have lots of ideas.
Well, let's talk about your ideas, but I think on the point you're making, actually, what my job is, is to ask the questions on behalf of the members of the public who will not get to speak to you.
The questions are deliberate.
You're not asking me questions.
But if you're happy with your comments.
You're trying to wind them up.
But if you're happy with your comments, then being asked to explain them ought to help some people understand them.
I might have to write a thesis to explain them, because they're very contextual.
There are deep meta points in there, and they're also laden in much irony and fun and levity.
It's too complicated to explain in an interview like this.
I'm sorry.
But one of the main issues that UKIP has focused on as a party, and something that it has always been very vocal about, is grooming gangs, and it's about girls, particularly that have been targeted by grooming gangs.
And the party has taken a really strong line on that, and it always has done.
Now, there is a particular video where you gave a platform to a man, a campaigner, I suppose, Amos Yee.
Now, he said that he believes there shouldn't be an age of consent, and actually, he just doesn't believe that it's relevant.
Yeah, what did I say?
And you have a conversation with him where you say, well, you know, I think actually the age of consent is fine.
But then you both...
Right, so I'm pro age of consent.
Which is fine.
Because another question is, why did you bring this up?
If I'm pro-age of consent, why bring up that I've spoken to someone who's anti-age of consent?
Because obviously we had an argument about that.
I was trying to persuade him of my point of view.
He was trying to persuade me of his point of view.
I don't think that he was successful.
What I wanted to ask you was, in that conversation...
This isn't a UKIP policy, is it?
So UKIP's policy is very clear on grooming gangs, but in that video, in that video, when you're discussing, as you say, with him and you say, I'm happy with the age of consent, and you and he have a discussion, and you say, you know, I would like to talk to you about it, you also say that it would be an injustice for a priest who had a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old to be prosecuted if the 13-year-old didn't feel that anything wrong had happened.
You call that an injustice.
Now, I would like to ask you why you feel that that would be an injustice.
I also have to go back and watch it because I'm sure there was a wider context of the discussion.
And I mean, how many years ago was that?
Oh, you tell me.
I mean, I have it.
If you would like to.
Well, we'd have to watch the whole video because I'd need to see the context of the media.
Okay.
But I mean, I think the distinction that you're trying to make here, and I didn't, I mean, this isn't a subject I particularly want to talk about, but it's easy enough to do.
An age of consent is an arbitrary figure, which is why it changes from country to country.
Now, I'm actually getting a bit more radical on this.
I actually think it might need to be raised because the way that people seem to be maturing these days is slower and slower and slower.
And you get people in universities now who are demanding safe spaces and crayons and puppies and all this sort of thing to protect their feelings.
And so I'm thinking, okay, well, if people are remaining increasingly infantilized into their 20s now, maybe the age of consent should be raised.
Maybe the voting age should be raised if people just aren't emotionally and intellectually ready for these kind of experiences in life.
But the difference is the age of consent is designed to prevent unnecessary harm.
That's why we have it.
Because you don't know at what age a person physically has matured to the point where they're ready to engage in physical relationships.
And so we set it at what we think is a reasonable, rough guess.
I mean, not everyone is going to be hitting it.
You know, you're going to get people who are like 17, 18 who are not really ready for that sort of thing.
But then you'll get people like 14 or 15 who are ready for that sort of thing.
So it's a rough estimate.
The question is really about harm, a case of harm.
So if you get, for example, when I was 12 years old, there was a boy in my school who had a thick beard, really thick beard.
And he was looked at as kind of unusual because obviously no one else did.
None of us did.
He'd hit puberty really early and it obviously got done.
But if a guy like that had a relationship, probably not as damaging as if I at the time had had a relationship because I still hadn't, you know, I hadn't hit puberty at like 11 or 12, but he had.
So technically there might not be any harm, but legally we can't legislate that way.
We have to have a standard rule.
So it has to be somewhere that we set reliably.
So there you go.
So what should the age be?
I think 18, actually.
Again, I really think people are maturing a lot slower than they used to.
I mean, it's probably due to the fact that life is a lot easier now.
when life is a lot rougher, I think it'll probably grow up a lot quicker and the more sort of soft and bourgeois society becomes maybe, I mean, I'm not even I don't even know if it's a bad thing to be honest I think it's a good thing for kids to have a long, happy, innocent childhood.
I'm a father myself.
I don't want my son growing up quickly.
I don't want him rushing into life or anything like that.
I think that there should be time to just enjoy being what you are at those times before you get rushed into the next stage of life.
Because I'm nearly 40 now, and this is all, like, for any younger people watching, it all comes at you very, very quickly, and you've got to be ready.
So there's no, you know, there's no hurry.
So you have moved.
You've changed your opinion since your opinions all the time.
Well, you know, yeah, absolutely.
I changed my opinions all the time.
This is why it's so silly to go back four years and say more about this opinion here.
I mean, do you have the same opinions?
But doesn't that make it in some ways even more important?
Because what then you're able to do is to say, well, actually, I may have said that at the time.
Exactly as you've just done there.
I may have said at the time that I thought that perhaps there could be a case for this, but actually I've still got a lot of people.
Well, no, I still have it on there.
It is still, it's possible that there could be a 13-year-old who is not damaged by a relationship with an album.
It's possible.
I don't know of any examples of it, and I'm not going to suggest it's a good thing, obviously.
It's not something I would promote or anything like that.
Like I said, I think the age of consent could be raised.
But it's just a hypothetical.
It's an intellectual exercise.
You're taking it as if it's a party political broadcast.
It's just a thought experiment.
But in politics, you are asked to define your thoughts because you are representing a group of people, which is why it's then important to explore exactly where you stand on issues.
I am honestly waiting for me to ask me to define what I believe.
Well, I should say that.
This is the policy position.
Well, it's actually a very important policy position for UKIP.
It's one of the things that the party has been very vocal on.
Well, what has UKIP ever said about raising or lowering the age of concern?
They've been very, very vocal on the need to protect underage girls.
Now, as you've said, the current age of consent is where it is.
But in this conversation that I'm talking to you about, you expressed a view that there would be an injustice.
There wouldn't be an injustice.
For example, in the case of that 13-year-old, which I just discussed.
It's a hypothetical moral injustice, but that's not the same thing as the question of grooming gangs.
I mean, the question of grooming gangs isn't about whether technically the girls involved were hurt.
I mean, I'm sure most of them were.
I'm sure all of them were, actually.
The question is, why were the police so permissive of this going on for such a long time?
Because, I mean, even if technically there's no harm done, it doesn't matter.
The law is the law.
You've got to arrest the man who commits this kind of offence.
You have to.
I mean, that's for the judge to decide.
If the young lady, you know, can, you know, is for some reason saying, no, no, no, he's my boyfriend.
He didn't hurt me or something like that.
Then maybe he'll give him a license of sentence or something.
I'm not a judge, I don't know.
But it's irrelevant.
The problem with the grooming gangs wasn't something completely different.
It wasn't the fact that, you know, whether the EHS is correct.
It was the fact that the police weren't doing anything.
And this went on for decades.
And it seems to have been in mostly labour areas.
There have been labour councillors involved.
And now a Labour Lord is accused of being involved in the grooming gang himself.
And honestly, I would like to talk about that much more than any silly statement I said four years ago.
Those are allegations and let's not get into that.
You did.
And I'm repeating those allegations.
So let's not go into that right now.
But I would like to ask you, you know, what do you see as your role, as your primary role as an MEP?
If you are elected, what are you elected there to do?
What's your role?
Most important role.
That's a question for the ageist for any MEP, really, isn't it?
Because there isn't an awful lot they can do.
They're kind of the creatures of the European Commission.
But I think that my role would be to essentially be the tip of the spear when it comes to breaking through the shield of political correctness.
I'm very tired of people being shouted down under a bunch of smears and allegations when they raise a perfectly legitimate issue.
It's unacceptable.
It's a way of, frankly, censoring these people and preventing them from having their grievances heard over, again, the sort of political, correct, bourgeois moralising of Westminster.
Most of the country doesn't share it.
We're not interested in what you feel about what we've said.
We're interested in how we're going to deal with the real issues.
And that's what I think that mostly I'm going to be able to do.
Because UKIP's main message in these elections is Brexit.
It's that we will deliver Brexit for you.
Of course.
And, you know, UKIP, by many accounts, is the party that delivered the referendum.
So it's an incredibly important message.
Then what you've just said was nothing to do with Brexit.
Was it not?
Where do you stand on that?
There's a politically correct narrative around Brexit.
Well, you tell me, is there?
Of course there is.
You have a politically correct narrative about everything.
You live in a world of political correctness, in a world of words as well.
I find it very interesting.
It's a group of people in Westminster who live in a world of words, not deeds.
And I'm not that kind of person.
I live in a world of deeds, not words.
So, yes, you have a politically correct narrative around Brexit.
But do you think you're...
People didn't vote to be poorer.
No, they voted to leave.
Damn the consequences.
Do you think your comments in the past end up detracting from your message though?
Do they end up detracting from that message?
I don't know.
I seem to have used them to get quite a lot of media attention that otherwise I might not have had.
Who knows?
Maybe they were vital to me being here now and being talking to you.
So it helps.
Maybe.
Certainly helped me grow a large YouTube channel, didn't it?
But at the same time, there are people who are deeply offended by some of the things that you've said.
Well, I tell you what, they can go and have a cry, and when they've collected themselves and they're ready to talk like an adult about the issues and not bring up things that they think might be offensive and spread them around the country to people who might be offended by them, then we can have a sensible conversation about the issues.
And you think that that's an acceptable and appropriate message for the active politicians?
I think that the adults at home don't need me to comfort them or baby them.
They need me to talk about certain issues that are not being talked about by progressive gatekeepers.
So I think we should talk about the issues.
So tell me how the polling looks in your area.
I actually haven't checked the regional polling.
I've been too busy on the road, to be honest.
Okay.
What's your prospect for winning in your mind?
Well, honestly, I don't think it's too bad.
I mean, if we're going by, like, the previous round's polling, I mean, it's obviously going to be, everything's in flux at the moment, so, you know, nothing, I honestly don't know if any of the polls are accurate.
I mean, the polling wasn't accurate about Brexit itself, the referendum.
It wasn't accurate about Donald Trump.
It's not been accurate very much about a lot of things.
And who knows why?
It could be that people just start telling the pollsters wanting to really think or something like that.
Who knows?
But last time, UKIP gained the most share of the votes out of the MEP elections, 33%.
And then the Conservatives are 28 and Labour are, I think, 13 or something like that.
So, I don't know.
Maybe it looks pretty good.
I have no idea.
It seems that way.
When we're going to these places, we're really having really great conversations in these town centres.
And there are a lot of people turning in.
In Bristol, we had probably about 50 people on a Tuesday afternoon, which is pretty good for a Tuesday afternoon, you know.
So, yeah, it's been going really well.
The local press is a lot more neutral when it comes to these sort of things.
They're a lot more issue-focused.
They're not so much interested in talking about tweets from five years ago.
They're interested in talking about why we're here and the things we're talking about.
And they give us quite a fair shake.
It's quite nice of them.
So are you concerned that the Brexit Party might split the vote?
Well, it's proportional representation.
So you're going to get Brexiteers either way.
So, no, not really.
So you would be happy to kind of work with Brexit Party candidates?
Of course.
I mean, the thing with the Brexit Party in UKIP is it's a very, very clear class divide here.
I mean, Nigel Farage isn't Jared Batten and Jared Batten isn't Nigel Farage.
And I think that the head-butting that they've gone on with for the past 25 years has been really along class lines.
And you can see that in the kind of demographics and the sort of people they can tap and the sort of money they can raise.
But I think that for people who are sort of like middle and working class, or the aspiring sort of working class, the middle class, that sort of class range, I think that there's a lot in UKIP that would be very, very appealing to them.
And I think that, I mean, I'm one of those people.
And I think that it's time for us to essentially get out of our living rooms and get political.
Both of those men have been in the political, what you would describe as the political establishment, for their entire careers.
So how are they any different to the people that you are describing as the problem?
I wouldn't call UKIP the political establishment.
But they have both been MEPs, which is an established political organisation.
But the press has never treated UKIP in the same way that it treats the other parties.
I do think, and again, I think there's a very distinct element of classism there.
Okay, so give me your top five policy offers.
What's your top five on the doorstep?
Well, actual policies.
I mean, what can an MEP even propose?
Well, I mean, you heard one of your current MEPs on the stage at the launch describing how he has a particular interest in agriculture, and so he advances those policies at every agricultural meeting.
So what would be your top five policies on the doorstep?
Yeah, okay, yeah.
So it's more about social issues that I think aren't being spoken about.
I think really there's a kind of log jam that's being caused by political correctness.
I think it's kind of a dam that's about to burst.
And I think we're going to end up with some pretty nasty characters if we don't just move those logs ourselves.
Because you're going to get some really rough types who are going to come out of the woodwork and do nasty things.
Some people would say that you, I. You are a rough police.
I am.
I am an example of this.
And you're lucky that it's me.
I'm a free speech extremist.
I think we should be able to say whatever we like.
There are going to be worse people who come after me, so it's probably best if we just have a reasonable conversation now, get this out of the way so those people don't feel that they have no other options.
And I'll tell you what, the recent wave of sort of internet censorship, and this is something that Westminster pushes all the time, really quite terrifyingly for the alternative media.
This is something that I think is making people really radical.
I think it's really concerning.
I think that the more we try to ignore it or shame people for it, the worse the problem is going to be.
So free speech, number one.
Definitely.
Identity politics, political correctness, the trouble with radical Islam, that's a significant complaint.
There are loads of just minor, not minor social ills, but like social ills that are not being allowed to be politicized.
That's the problem.
So what's the offer on those things?
You talk about radical Islam.
What's the offer?
What's the policy offer?
Well, I mean, really, we have to have debates on this because I'm not sure that we can just state unilateral policies because a lot of this is about social negotiation.
For example, Jess Phillips, in fact, is a great example of this.
So it was in 2016 when Philip Davies, the conservative MP for Shipley, tried to table a motion to talk about serious issues that men face.
And one of those issues is male suicide, because suicide is the number one cause of the killer of men under 45.
So my uncle committed suicide.
So you can imagine how much I want this on the table.
And so when she laughs at the idea and then blocks it in Parliament, I have a problem with that.
And the root of that is not Jess Phillips herself.
The root of that is the philosophy she follows, which is third wave or fourth wave feminism, whichever wave we're on now.
Because that kind of feminism defines women as victims.
It defines them as oppressed by men.
And as soon as you adopt that kind of worldview, you see the men as the oppressors and they have a kind of catchphrase.
They say, it's okay to hate your oppressor.
It's justified to hate your oppressor.
And it's hard to argue with that.
I mean, it probably is justified to hate an oppressor if you're a slave or something, but you have to agree that oppression is actually going on first.
And as with all these kind of like radical neo-Marxist movements, they redefine certain terms to mean something they don't mean.
I mean, for example, racism.
You probably have a definition that's very similar to the average person, who's prejudice based on race.
But that's not the definition that radical left-wing academics use.
So when they say racism, we don't even agree on the definition of the word.
So now, when they say Britain is a racist country, or like Monroe Bergdorf was Jeremy Corbyn's ex-advisor, saying the white race is evil or the most oppressive race in all of history, we don't agree on the definitions.
And that's unbelievably incendiary rhetoric that is being used.
And I mean, that's way worse than anything Tommy Robinson has ever said.
And yet she gets a pass, Jeremy Corbyn gets a pass.
It can't go on.
You're a stickler for context.
Why don't you explain the context around that Jess Phillips Phillip Davies exchange?
I'm actually not sure about the full context.
It seemed to be that he was in Parliament trying to table a motion for a debate on men's issues and what can be done to help.
And he was alive.
You just said to me that you wouldn't engage with me because I didn't understand the full context of your remarks.
And yet the point you're making, you don't understand the context of the remarks.
Well, I think I do.
I mean, it was a parliamentary hearing that Jess Phillips was chairing for some reason.
And Philip Davies was trying to present this.
I mean, like, this is not a particularly complex topic.
My videos are because they're multi-layered.
There's a lot going on and there's a long, like I said, arching metanarrative over the top.
So that sort of thing, and you have to understand internet culture, so I have to keep talking through all of that.
Very complex.
But I don't think that asking for a debate in Parliament and then being laughed at when there's a real serious issue by a feminist who thinks men are oppressing her, she's the one with the levers of power here.
She's the one punching down.
But you're removing the context because Jess Phillips didn't laugh at male suicide, which is what you have said in the past.
That is not what happened.
There is a context around those comments and around the exchange, which you are not aware of.
I actually think I might be.
I think I may have spoken too soon, though.
Why is it expecting that?
So, yeah, I mean, Philip Davies is saying, I'd like to have a debate in which we discuss male suicide, and Jess Phillips laughs.
I don't think it's unfair since she's laughing at the idea of male suicide or discussing it at the very least.
And I think Evil 1 is utterly inappropriate for an elected MP.
I mean, she represents men as well, but in her mind, they're oppressing her.
So, what are we going to do with that information?
How do we talk about it?
These are the kind of conversations that I'm trying to have.
But you're happy to have conversations about those remarks, but you won't engage with me when I ask you about remarks that you have made.
Yeah, but you're asking me about deliberate provocations that I'm making to get your attention, because otherwise, how do I get your attention?
How do I get you to notice that there's principled opposition to what's going on philosophically in our parliament?
And now I'd like to have a philosophical discussion about the parliament.
So we can't have a philosophical discussion about the comments because they were just a strategy.
They're just a way of getting you to notice.
But you made those comments many, many years before you stood as a candidate.
Yeah.
So how are they a strategy for your candidacy?
They're not.
I don't want to talk about them.
I want to talk about the philosophical problems we have with this country.
I mean, look, listen, there is a wing of the Labour Party that thinks that the United Kingdom, Britain itself, is a bad idea.
They think that it's an evil thing.
They think it's oppressive, colonialist, sort of like raping, you know, demolishing, evil force in the world.
And we should atone for it.
And that means basically flagellating ourselves with things that people in the past did, over which we had no control in the present.
That is a fun.
I mean, like, Jeremy Corin sides with every single terrorist group I can think of.
And this is the head of a party that's about to take over this country because the Conservatives are about to crash, as everyone knows.
And so I'm genuinely concerned that we can't talk about this.
We have no space to talk about.
No one will address.
And I don't even know if you guys see it.
I don't know if you guys see it, but everyone outside of it can see.
You know, at least the people who don't support Labour.
And it's really concerning.
I mean, one of the things that bothered me is for one Labour conference, they were actually selling tickets on the door that were £30 for white people and £20 for non-white people.
I mean, to me, that is the most morally disgraceful thing I've ever seen.
I would never discriminate in any way on the basis of race, especially in that regard.
That is absolutely unconscionable.
I can't believe anyone would vote for the Labour Party when they hire people like Monroe Bergdorf.
Then you have people like Khindi Andrews, I think his name is, the University of Birmingham African Studies professor who literally said the English flag is the most racist flag in the world.
That's my flag.
I'm an Englishman.
No, no, but I'm not having people come into my country and say your flag's racist, your country's evil, the people in it are all racist.
I'm not having that wrong.
We're not a racist country.
We're anti-racist country.
We're an individualist country.
We invented the idea of not being racist.
But you have a video where you call Chinese people chinks.
And by all accounts, that's racist.
Words have meaning and you don't know what the meaning of that word was.
You don't know what the context was, what the narrative of it is.
That's the point.
It's broadly accepted as a racist term.
Yeah, I know.
That's why I used it.
But then you accept that it is racist.
Because I'm an entertainer.
Yeah, racism to me, personally, I find racism, racist jokes, funny, right?
Because you would never be.
But this country isn't a racist country.
I know, that's why they're funny.
If it was a racist country, it wouldn't be funny.
Because it would be actual racial oppression, but this is not what Britain is like.
There was a survey done where they asked you, would you be okay to live next to a person of a different race?
In this country, it was less than 1% who said, no, I wouldn't be okay with that.
In France, it was 20%.
I wouldn't go to France and make those jokes because that would be a serious deal.
But in this country, racism is just not a problem.
It's a pathology of the radical left to continually worry about racism.
I think generally it's a way of essentially escaping responsibility for actually failing to tackle the issues.
So making those comments is okay.
Yes, if they're jokes.
You can make jokes about anything.
Ask someone like Frankie Boyle or David Bediel.
They've lied Ricky Gervace.
These people have long defended making offensive jokes.
It's a long-standing British tradition.
I can't even believe you would ask me if it's okay to joke about dark things.
Yes, of course it is.
Everyone thinks that.
Even if it's a child, a disabled child.
Anything.
It depends on the context, obviously, but you can joke about anything.
And jokes make, look, I don't understand why you guys have a problem with jokes.
Because jokes are the normalisation of differences.
If we can joke, it's banter, right?
And this was another thing.
So, like, there's been attempts to essentially criminalise national ethnic banter between the English and the Scots and the Welsh.
Like, there was a, I can't remember who it was, but he said, you know, the bridge over the river Seven Kennedy's Wales with the First World.
That's funny.
You know, the Welsh are not really offended by that.
They used to banter with the English.
And, you know, you get the Scots who say things, oh, that's a hate crime against the English.
That's nonsense.
It's banter.
And what it does is it makes us normal to one another.
It means we're used to being there, because it's not a way of actually trying to push each other down or unseat each other or disrespect each other.
It's a way of saying, look, I know that you're here to stay.
I know that you're a person I respect and you know this.
And so we can just laugh at an offensive thing.
And it actually brings people closer.
And I really think that the Westminster bubble has lost this in their obsession with political correctness.
But when you and I were talking just now and you were explaining the issue about the English flag, you said the professor came over here and said that it was the most racist thing.
It's not banter, is it?
He's not his father.
It's not banter.
You misunderstand me.
Sorry.
You said he came over here and said the flag is racist.
Well, I don't know where it's from.
What do you mean by came over here?
Well, maybe I phrase that badly, sorry.
Because that would be construed as a racist remark, wouldn't it?
Why?
Well, what if he's an immigrant?
I mean, he might be an immigrant.
I don't know.
I mean, I'm the descendant of immigrants.
So my grandfather came from St. Helena.
So I don't perceive immigration as being a shameful thing or anything of the sort.
I see attacking the moral standards and the identity of the nation to be a bad thing.
Because I identify very firmly as an Englishman and a Brit.
And that bothers me when someone who obviously doesn't identify these ways starts attacking the core of my identity.
It seems evil to me.
What kind of person attacks another person's identity?
What kind of person does that?
And yet he does it professionally.
That's something you should ask yourself.
Because what you're doing is trying to isolate them from their friends and family and social connections and the core sense of self when you attack someone's identity.
Hang on.
And that is the sort of thing a cult does in order to recruit members.
So they break them down, make them vulnerable and suck them into whatever new programming they want to put on.
So that's why I'm, this is why I want to become an MP.
So I can raise these kind of issues in this kind of way because this is important.
But in a way, isn't saying come over here, creating an other and therefore doing exactly what you've just said.
Everyone has another.
Everyone has a moral community.
Within that community, they consider the people to be valuable and necessary to them.
Like, for example, I'm not within the moral community of Westminster because of my class.
I'm not part of your club.
You don't like me.
You don't want to hang out with me.
I don't particularly want to hang out with you guys.
We are separate moral communities.
So you could say to me, oh, you came over to Westminster and said X, Y and Z.
And I would say, well, that's true.
That doesn't mean you're racist towards me or something like that.
Because I did.
I don't live in Westminster.
I live in the southwest.
I've been there for 20 years.
I live in Swindon.
Just Phillips was laughing at Impalmer.
As if the idea of just me living in Swindon itself is funny.
It's so weird how you guys see the world just so uptight.
I just want to ask you finally.
There are some people who would say that UKIP has decided to move towards the right and it is appealing to the rights of the rights.
Well, when we say the right, what do you mean?
So that's what I'm going to explain to you.
So some people would see some of the views that are held by some people as far right, so particularly views about very strong views about national identity, about other communities.
Do you think that that is a fair thing to say?
Is UKIP now appealing to the far right of politics?
Well, I'd like you to define far right for me before I can answer that, please.
What would your definition of far-right be?
not one using the term, you're the one using it.
So I've suggested it's, there have been some suggestions that perhaps people who have very, very strong views on things like immigration, Okay, but the far left have very strong views on immigration.
They're very much pro.
They want unlimited immigration.
That's a very strong view, in my opinion.
So what is a far right?
But what ideology do they follow?
Very, very strong views against immigration, perhaps.
That's what we're doing.
But what ideology are we talking about?
Are we talking about fascism?
We talk about Nazism.
Is that what you're trying to say?
I'm just asking you the question.
it has been suggested that perhaps UKIP is appealing to a group of voters who haven't necessarily been appealed to before.
Now, would you say that that group...
Well, yeah, but I need to know what you mean by far right.
because UKIP is a traditional British liberal party.
Everything they say and think is, I mean, most of them aren't particularly ideological, so they don't realize, but it's the sort of fundamental, traditional British values, the liberal values that emerged out of this country, that sunk into the fabric, the social fabric, and the sort of cultural mindset of these people.
So they do not think anything particularly radical or even offensive in any way, shape or form.
So when you say far right, I mean, if you mean fascism, fascism is a product of socialism.
All of the fascists were socialists first.
This came from the continent.
I mean, if you ask a member of UKIP about this, they'd be like, that looks German to me and I want to attack it because it looks like the Nazis are coming.
Really, they're kind of the heirs to Winston Churchill's Liberal Party.
They're just like David Cameron in, I think it was 2015 said, look, we need muscular liberalism.
Well, UKIP's it.
UKIP is not prepared to compromise on these fundamental values because they're good values.
They really are good values.
They make the country what it is.
And it is a foreign ideology that has come over and said, right, we're not going to be individualist.
We're not going to respect the individuals, the sanctity of the individual.
We want group rights.
We want to promote certain identities.
We're going to attack the native identities here.
That's unacceptable.
You can't do that.
That's a horrible thing to do to people.
Especially if people aren't really very well educated in the subject and don't really know what's happening to them.
It's not fair.
Okay, thank you very much.
My pleasure.
▲
Export Selection