May 4, 2019 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
07:54
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| What's your name, sir? | |
| I'm Greg. | |
| Greg, nice to meet you, Greg. | |
| Yeah, you too. | |
| Cool. | |
| So I wanted to change gears a little bit. | |
| It's a little bit of a less heavy thing than crime statistics or Brexit and that kind of thing. | |
| I wanted to talk a little bit about creative freedom and kind of liberalism, if that's cool. | |
| I have a question for you. | |
| But it's a question I kind of know the answer to, but I think it might be useful to discuss a little bit. | |
| I'll explain anyway. | |
| So my entry point into kind of your stuff and kind of the culture war and politics more widely is through censorship. | |
| I studied film A-level in Swindon, actually. | |
| And sort of saw the censorship cases and protests with films like The Exorcist, The Life of Brian, da-da-da. | |
| Then when I did degree level, I looked at the 1980s video nasty era, Mary Whitehouse, the history of the British Board of Film classification and how censorious they are. | |
| So I've kind of always had a B in my bonnet about that kind of thing. | |
| And then when I noticed it happening more in sort of 2014, 2015, there was the thing with the scientist Matt Taylor's shirt and that kind of thing. | |
| I read John Ronson's book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed, which I'd recommend to people as well. | |
| And so I was like, well, this stuff is going too far. | |
| And then I saw your video, Illiberal Progressives, which is quite an early one now. | |
| It is, yeah. | |
| And the individual versus collectivism one, and the one on neo-progressive activists, which I would recommend to people as a good entry point out of your thousands of videos. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Because they explain a lot of what's going on and will help people understand that. | |
| So, yeah, so at that point I was like, oh, I read Locke and Mill, and I was like, this is my jam. | |
| I'm this type of liberal, the you and Brendan O'Neill type of liberal. | |
| So that's always been the thing that's got me all like not on my watch kind of thing. | |
| Yeah, that's my area of focus. | |
| Honestly, I'm glad I managed to get you out into the streets. | |
| Because it matters. | |
| If we don't speak up, then our freedoms will continue to be eroded. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| So I set that to kind of say this. | |
| Given that I think there might be, I suspect there's quite a lot of people out there who are, like me, maybe not your typical audience so much, maybe not the typical involved in politics people so much, but kind of leftied, arty, outside the box, weird people. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And I've met a lot who don't understand why the censorship is happening, why the creative possibilities they have are being closed in on and that kind of thing, and who aren't, like me, following all the individual cases of everything. | |
| And I suspect they would agree with you on these things and connect maybe through that topic specifically. | |
| So the question I want to ask is, why is liberalism specifically, the set of ideas, the best way to ensure that people like me and other weirdos out there can keep making whatever we want and watching whatever films we want and more broadly there's cool stuff for everyone to enjoy and be inspired by and art and stuff. | |
| So why is it the best way to preserve the flourishing of those cycles of creativity? | |
| Well honestly, I mean what are your options? | |
| Liberalism is the only philosophy that supports free speech. | |
| I mean it's the philosophy that believes in free speech. | |
| I mean look at all the other ones. | |
| You've got progressives who will happily censor any kind of what they consider to be offensive speech. | |
| Yeah I mean they're definitely not the answer. | |
| Absolutely and then you've got the conservatives who are happy to preserve the progressive world order of hate speech laws and gross offense on the books. | |
| I mean the conservatives have been in power for eight, nine years now. | |
| They could have got rid of this anytime they wanted but they haven't. | |
| And then I mean good grief, you know you certainly can't look to any kind of more theocratic positions for any solution on that. | |
| You can't censorius as well. | |
| They all have their rules of how they want society to be and they term these things as blasphemy. | |
| I mean look at Charlie Hebb though. | |
| You know it's it's liberalism that provided the platform for things like this to flourish and without liberalism these things will just go the way of the dinosaur. | |
| They'll be a relic of the past. | |
| And people who are creative types, artists, you know, musicians, anyone who's creating anything, will find themselves chafing at state-sponsored censorship. | |
| And I mean, if we want a free world where you are free to express yourself, I don't see how we can be anything other than liberals. | |
| So it's definitely something that I'm very, very keen to push, as you can see. | |
| And as you've said from the videos, and it's definitely something that UKIP as a party is very aware of. | |
| You know, I don't think that any of the other parties in this country support speech at all. | |
| I just see all of them trying, like, regardless of your political position, I just see all of them trying to shut it down in different ways. | |
| Nobody's actually saying, like, oh, we have this important thing in our history, our traditions, of the history of British art and creative freedom and our weird eccentric types that we've had throughout history and who make amazing stuff that we still enjoy to this day. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Like, I don't see anyone standing up for that. | |
| And it's kind of frightening to me, to be honest. | |
| Well, honestly, I'm terrified of it. | |
| And I really think that if we want the freedom to be eccentric and to make strange and interesting things and to make the world a cooler place. | |
| Well, that's the fun stuff. | |
| Exactly. | |
| Let's see if we can. | |
| The weirdos are the fun, interesting people. | |
| They come up with the stuff. | |
| Exactly. | |
| And we've got to protect these people's rights to express themselves as they want. | |
| I mean, like, I'm not a fan of Andy Warhol's art. | |
| But by God, I'm glad that he's free to do it or he was free to do it. | |
| Of course. | |
| There's tons of art that I don't like. | |
| There's tons of films and music and sculptures I don't like. | |
| I just don't go and check them out. | |
| I just focus on the things I like and just think, fair enough, that's for someone else. | |
| They should have the right to make whatever they want. | |
| Exactly. | |
| But I want these people to be able to enjoy these strange things. | |
| I think it's good that they exist. | |
| Now, you know, who knows? | |
| Maybe at some point in my life, I'll find appreciation for them, you know, and I'll be glad that they're there. | |
| But if the sensors get their way, then they won't. | |
| No one can appreciate it. | |
| Exactly. | |
| Even people who would like them. | |
| Exactly. | |
| So, yeah, honestly, free speech is one of the drums I've been beating for a long time now because I think it really is. | |
| I mean, A, it's a human right, you know, from what we consider to be a human right in the EU, the UN, the British unwritten constitution. | |
| We all recognize this. | |
| And yet it is trampled on every day and in various other legislative ways. | |
| So we've really, and not last but not least, social media, which I'm sure you're aware of, Article 13. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Any kind of transformative content that you intend to put on the internet, Article 13, the European Committee. | |
| Very bad news for anyone that's creative in nearly any creative field. | |
| Yeah, absolutely. | |
| Anyone who is not part of the world. | |
| That's a serious thing. | |
| Anyone that's not part of the sort of the establishment in that regard, any independent artists, they should be very concerned about this. | |
| And this is what Julia Reeder of the Pirate Party in Germany has been very, very active on on social media. | |
| She's been an absolute star when it comes to this. | |
| But yeah, it's coming. | |
| And people are going to be very surprised when they can't upload a GIF or an image, a macro or something like that to whatever social media platform they're using because of EU regulations. | |
| So it's something that we've got to watch out for. | |
| And again, we need to get out sooner rather than later. | |
| Yeah, and with the more censorious attitude generally, I mean, I've got friends who are in different creative fields or artistic fields who aren't tuned into this stuff. | |
| And I've spoken to them and they're like, well, why are these mobs of people often in another country telling me what art I'm allowed to make or what I'm allowed to write about? | |
| Like, what are they doing? | |
| I've had to explain, you know, it's this new strain of kind of authoritarian leftism that's come in the last four or five years and it's kind of a new thing. | |
| And this is what they want. | |
| These are their principles. | |
| This is how they want the world to be. | |
| And this is why they're going around shutting down everyone's art and stuff. | |
| And it's confusing to people who don't know where it's coming from. | |
| It's like, well, yeah, you're exactly right. | |
| And it generally is people in other countries as well who go around and harass online various businesses or wherever companies or what it is, art galleries, wherever it's being hosted. | |
| And they just brownbeat them into submission. | |
| And like you say, this is bad for the artist, the creator themselves. | |
| Regardless of their political ideology, if you make things, it's bad for you. | |
| That's absolutely. | |
| So yeah, vote UKIP. | |
| We're the only party who cares about free speech. | |
| Cool. | |
| All right. | |
| Good source. |
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