Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Normalising Troublesome Dialogue
Aired: 2019-05-24
Duration: 08:08


=== Spreading Evil Rhetoric (02:24) ===

[00:00:00]  It's Mr. Benjamin.
[00:00:01]  Right, well it's good to see you again.
[00:00:03]  I've got to speak to you this time.
[00:00:06]  I've been in trouble.
[00:00:07]  On the appalling way that you are normalising troublesome dialogue.
[00:00:15]  That's true.
[00:00:16]  It is.
[00:00:16]  I am normalising troublesome dialogue.
[00:00:18]  And it is spreading.
[00:00:20]  Really?
[00:00:21]  It is spreading the evil rhetorical techniques you use of logic, reason, and evidence are spreading.
[00:00:29]  I'm sorry.
[00:00:30]  I'll try and stop that if that's me.
[00:00:32]  If that's hurting some feelings.
[00:00:34]  It is grossly irresponsible of you.
[00:00:36]  I saw yesterday a grown woman brought to a state of emotional trauma as Victoria Derbyshire attempted to use logic against you.
[00:00:46]  And it was like watching a child playing with a loaded gun.
[00:00:50]  I wasn't mad.
[00:00:54]  I felt really sorry for them.
[00:00:55]  A lot of people did get hurt.
[00:00:56]  I looked on the Twitter feed afterwards and it was 99% appalled, traumatized.
[00:01:03]  And there were questions of why is this man not locked up already?
[00:01:07]  Well, if they get their way, I will be.
[00:01:11]  So there is that.
[00:01:12]  But yeah, I think that what I wanted to say in the interview with Victoria that I didn't get to do because it was a bit hardball, I suppose I'd describe it as.
[00:01:24]  I wouldn't say hardball.
[00:01:26]  It was as sympathetic as any Maoist show trial.
[00:01:31]  That's such a great way of describing it.
[00:01:34]  But no, I actually quite enjoyed the interview.
[00:01:37]  But I found it very interesting when she said, you know, you're normalizing these horrible things.
[00:01:41]  And it's like, well, they are normal.
[00:01:43]  They happen to regular people every day.
[00:01:46]  They're tragedies that will happen to every single person.
[00:01:49]  There's no getting away from it.
[00:01:50]  And there's no point trying to pretend that it won't.
[00:01:53]  And the easiest way to deal with it is to make it not scary.
[00:01:56]  And one of the quickest ways to make something not scary is to mock it.
[00:02:01]  That's the purpose of humour.
[00:02:03]  And that's the reason that totalitarian regimes go after comedians first.
[00:02:06]  They go after free speech first.
[00:02:08]  Because if you can take the power away from them and make something not sacred by laughing at it, then it suddenly loses its grip over you.

=== Tough Conversations Needed (05:58) ===

[00:02:16]  You lose the mental hold that it has over you.
[00:02:18]  And I really do believe this, with a sincere conviction, that we have to be able to talk about uncomfortable things.
[00:02:25]  And of course, that makes some people protest because they don't like that.
[00:02:29]  I think what you're misunderstanding is the depth and breadth of the feeling opposed to your way of view.
[00:02:37]  And there's an excellent example from history for how you should take it.
[00:02:42]  Are you familiar with Alan Turing?
[00:02:45]  I am, yes.
[00:02:46]  So Alan Turing was of a disposition that was felt to be incompatible with the morality of his times.
[00:02:54]  And he took an action which removed that cause of stress from society.
[00:03:00]  And I brought you an apple with me today.
[00:03:02]  Did he not commit suicide?
[00:03:04]  That's right.
[00:03:05]  Yes, I am.
[00:03:05]  remove the problem that's that's and given that you are such a tiny minority as judged by twitter should i should i also follow his example well Well, wouldn't it be the fair and decent thing to do to spare the world suffering?
[00:03:20]  But this is the thing.
[00:03:25]  Well, no, no, but this.
[00:03:27]  I like the way you've framed this.
[00:03:29]  It's very genteel.
[00:03:32]  This is exactly what they want to have us do, is just say, look, we'll pretend the problems don't exist.
[00:03:38]  We don't have to pretend.
[00:03:39]  They know the problem exists.
[00:03:41]  And the problem is gobby bastards like you, who I think I should say are suffering from moral chuettes, you cannot resist speaking the truth.
[00:03:52]  And that's bloody offensive.
[00:03:57]  Where do I go with that?
[00:03:59]  Honestly, it's a very simple way you go with that.
[00:04:02]  Branch Davidian trust, and there have been plenty of examples of mass cult suicides.
[00:04:09]  All you have to do is arrange for your followers to get together and remove the distress of our existence from the life of normies.
[00:04:18]  Well, I agree, but the problem is that the problems themselves are going to keep creating people like us because we are all an example of.
[00:04:24]  Modern genetic counseling can fix that.
[00:04:26]  Well, I imagine eventually they will make it so we're effectively in Fahrenheit 451, was it?
[00:04:32]  Wait, Brave New World.
[00:04:33]  Sorry, yeah, Brave New World.
[00:04:34]  Bokanovsky is on this way.
[00:04:36]  So we won't have that problem.
[00:04:38]  But at the moment, we are all a consequence of the failures of the system to fail to actually address through dialogue and reasonable compromise the problems that we actually do face.
[00:04:47]  And instead of talking to us, because I'm sure that you're all fine people, I'm sure that you're not hateful people.
[00:04:53]  I'm sure that you are not people who want to do damage to the world.
[00:04:56]  But things are being done that have to be discussed.
[00:04:58]  And calling people racists or fascists is not the answer.
[00:05:02]  It just isn't.
[00:05:03]  And I'm sorry that I'm not giving you a more eloquent response to your wonderful framing here because it really was.
[00:05:09]  I mean, you must have worked on this.
[00:05:13]  But I do believe that it is a moral wrong to try and shut down these debates and shut down these conversations.
[00:05:20]  I think we have an obligation, a duty to have the tough conversations.
[00:05:25]  And it's really to the embarrassment of the media that I can turn up and, like, I don't know, what, like 30 people, 40 people turn up on a Friday afternoon, a cold Friday afternoon in Weymouth to talk about literally the problems we can't discuss in public on the media.
[00:05:39]  You know, and I realize that a lot of this is offensive or something like that.
[00:05:42]  Even then, I don't actually find anything that we're talking about particularly offensive.
[00:05:46]  But it is their failing that we have to come together like this to do this.
[00:05:51]  They have a responsibility to represent your issues in the public dialogue.
[00:05:55]  And they can't just refuse on the grounds that they find you to be morally impure.
[00:06:00]  You know, not everyone had meat and education.
[00:06:02]  Not everyone is ready for the dinner party atmosphere of Westminster.
[00:06:05]  Politics is grimy and grubby and should be done in the streets like this.
[00:06:11]  They're sat in their ivory towers where they're not the constant.
[00:06:13]  They never have to suffer the consequences of their own policies.
[00:06:17]  They are very well insulated.
[00:06:18]  They've got guards, they've got money, they've got very, very lavish surroundings.
[00:06:23]  It's not their problem.
[00:06:25]  And you can see that the absolute...
[00:06:27]  To be fair, they do have to suffer the problem as well.
[00:06:30]  But Anna Subi can get people who call her a Nazi locked up.
[00:06:33]  I was about to go on to James Goddard.
[00:06:35]  Yeah, how long did he spend in jail?
[00:06:36]  I think it was only a month.
[00:06:38]  It was only a month, right?
[00:06:39]  Okay, well, there we go.
[00:06:40]  But to be fair, they weren't as sympathetic as the leftists really want to be.
[00:06:44]  They want you to take...
[00:06:45]  I read a travel book that was written just for you.
[00:06:48]  Oh, really?
[00:06:49]  Yeah.
[00:06:49]  By old Alexander Solchenitsyn.
[00:06:52]  It's an archipelago where you would really fit in.
[00:06:56]  I can't believe I'm not already there.
[00:06:58]  Their trust pilot reviews are exemplary.
[00:07:00]  Very, very few people ever came back and spoke out against it.
[00:07:04]  Yeah, no complaints.
[00:07:06]  But James Goddard is a great example of this, actually.
[00:07:09]  As soon as the sort of working class decided, right, they were going to get involved because people like Anna Subry were actively trying to undermine the result of the referendum.
[00:07:17]  And still, they're trying to just reverse this.
[00:07:20]  When he goes down and starts calling her a Nazi and saying, well, I have a problem with what you're doing.
[00:07:24]  Oh, my God.
[00:07:25]  The plebs are revolting.
[00:07:27]  This has got to be stopped.
[00:07:28]  So a month in jail and he was banned from going inside the M25.
[00:07:32]  He can't even go to parliament now.
[00:07:34]  He can't go and protest.
[00:07:35]  He has been denied his democratic rights because a politician didn't like the way he was protesting her.
[00:07:40]  Well, I'm sorry.
[00:07:41]  He didn't do anything illegal.
[00:07:42]  He just yelled that she was a Nazi.
[00:07:44]  I mean, my goodness, I bet everyone here got a penny for every time they've been called a Nazi because they want to have a conversation that the establishment don't particularly want to have.
[00:07:52]  We'd all be very wealthy people, but it happens one time to one Remain MP, and that's it.
[00:07:57]  Jail and banned.
[00:07:58]  It's unacceptable.
[00:08:00]  It's totally unacceptable.
[00:08:02]  He'll have to go to Kekistan.
[00:08:04]  He absolutely will.
[00:08:05]  Hopefully, we don't get sent to the gulags instead.
[00:08:07]  Thank you, man.