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July 3, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
40:38
Episode 586 Scott Adams: Answering the Dumbest Questions About Antifa as a Sporting Event
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My shirt's all rumpled.
Hey everybody, come on in here.
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I'm Scott Adams.
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Go! Well, if I'm right, we're going to have a big crowd today coming in to complain about me.
So, yesterday I did two periscopes.
The second one was... On the topic of Antifa, and I know you're all streaming in here to yell at me for what you think is a crazy take, a terrible take, I'm hearing on social media.
But before we get to that, a few other things in the news.
So I understand that HP, Dell, Microsoft, and Amazon are all looking at maybe moving production out of China.
That's a pretty big deal.
It looks like China's got some explaining to do.
And I've been saying for a while that I just don't know if we need an agreement with China.
If they're not willing to handle the fentanyl stuff, we should look to wind down our business because there was probably a time when you just needed China.
And maybe we don't need them so much anymore.
So maybe we should phase out like the tech companies might be doing.
So the big 4th of July story, if I can call it that, keep in mind that all the, let's say the A-team for journalism are going to take this week off.
So a lot of people are going to be on vacation.
Your best producers and writers, no, not all of them.
Some people have to stay around and some of them will be the best.
But you're going to see the quality of the news go down quite a bit this week.
And one of the things that they're going to be talking about...
I see people complaining in the comments.
It's making me laugh. We'll get to that.
We'll get to that. But if the country is arguing about whether the 4th of July celebration is more about the country or more about Trump...
Well, things are pretty good.
Can you imagine a healthier situation than that's actually the headline news?
Headline news. We can't tell if this fun celebration that we're all going to enjoy is really more about Trump in his mind or more about the country in his mind.
Does it matter? You're going to have just as much fun either way.
I don't think it matters.
But I'm pretty sure the country will be able to keep this in perspective.
It's not like Trump changed...
Donald Trump did not change the 4th of July.
He didn't change it.
4th of July, still going to be about the country.
All right. Fareed Zakaria, who I respect on most things, except when it comes to Trump, he's had a bad case of TDS. But his opinions on most things, if they're not about Trump, are quite reasoned, and I enjoy his show quite a bit.
I enjoy his opinions quite a bit, too, not counting the TDS stuff.
But even Fareed did a little piece yesterday saying that Trump is right about one thing, which is that our asylum system is broken.
And that we kind of have ourselves to blame for some of the problems at the border because we've created a system that encourages it.
It's a big deal.
That's a big deal. And it justifies my, let's say, respect for his intellectual agility, talking about Fareed.
Because it wasn't easy, I don't think, for him to, in a sense, cross lines and say, okay, okay, it looks like Trump's sort of right on a very, very big thing.
Which is that our laws are broken and they do encourage the very thing that we're trying to have less of.
So that's a big deal.
And a productive one.
And I would say that in this instance, Fareed is a patriot.
Meaning that he's taking possibly an unpopular view for his core audience.
Because I would guess that he thinks it's the right thing to do.
So I have to respect that, especially around the 4th of July.
Alright, everybody wants to hear me and my terrible take about Antifa.
I'll give you a little background if somebody didn't hear it the first part so you can know what people are all worked up about.
I'm probably getting more hate or at least disagreement in my Twitter feed than usual.
Let me start off by saying this.
I'm pretty sure that 100% of the people who disagree with me are not disagreeing with my actual opinion.
So here's your starting point.
Every one of you who disagrees with me in the comments and on Twitter and in your own minds, every one of you is not disagreeing with me at all.
None of you. Not a single person.
Every single one of you is imagining something that I didn't say And getting mad about it.
Do you believe me? Do you believe that's true?
Do you believe that 100% of you, every single one of you, who disagreed with what I said about Antifa is not actually disagreeing with me?
They've imagined something I didn't say and they're disagreeing with that.
So you can see in the comments that a number of people understand that.
So I'm going to reiterate what I said yesterday, which did cause a lot of confusion, apparently.
And by the way, as a professional communicator, I'm not escaping my own responsibility for clear communication.
So I would have to say, based on just the number of people who seem to hear me incorrectly or misinterpret what I said, I will take full responsibility, if you'll allow me, I will take full responsibility for communicating in a way that caused people to misinterpret me.
When the person communicating doesn't take responsibility, I lose respect.
Now, I think you guys have some responsibility too.
But as a communicator, I think that the primary responsibility has to be with me.
So here's what I said.
I said that I saw a video of somebody who was an Antifa insider who was explaining the psychology of Antifa.
And what he said, and he had lots of examples, and he was very credible, and he was an insider.
He was like an organizer type.
And He said that the main motivation for the Antifa people, the black-block people who show up to cause trouble, is fun.
And he was very clear about it, spoke about it at length and in great detail.
And his theory was that males, and it's mostly men, 95% or something, That they have a need for some violence.
Okay, now these are not my opinions.
I'm talking about the Antifa person who was an insider talking about Antifa.
He said that it's young men who really needed to get some of their energy out and they had a biological need, he believed, to do dangerous, risky things because young men do.
And I agree with that part.
And that that was their primary motivation.
And that the political stuff was sort of an excuse.
Now, it's not that they don't believe the political stuff.
They do. It just wouldn't be motivating.
By itself, it wouldn't be a reason to show up on the street.
But because it's fun, they show up on the street.
So you should see it as more of an entertainment, recreational, sporting event.
Now, here's where I went wrong.
I suggested at one point that we should see it as a sporting event and that maybe it should be legal.
Now, here's where I went wrong.
When I said maybe it should be a sporting event and maybe it should be legal, here's the first thing you should say to yourself.
He's not serious about that.
If you said to yourself, oh, he's totally serious about that.
It should be an actual sporting event.
That's where you went wrong.
It's also where I went wrong, because apparently I say enough crazy stuff that it's not obvious when I'm not serious.
No, I don't think Antifa should be an actual sport.
And if you believe that's what I actually believed, well, that's where we went wrong.
So I take responsibility for that, because I said it, but in no way should you have thought that that was serious.
But let me take it a little further.
The things that people complained about is they said, and this is the part that's the funniest, they said, how can you say that rioting in the street should be a sport with all these innocent people who are not even there for the event getting attacked?
To which I say, well, if it's a sport, if you make it a sport, you would have to give it rules.
Just like MMA, just like boxing, just like football.
All of those sports have as a rule that you're not allowed to tackle the audience, you're not allowed to punch the ref, you're not allowed to do your fight outside of the cage.
If Antifa were to turn into a sport which I do not recommend, I was saying it as a joke, sort of a, you know, just something to make you think.
If it were to be turned into a sport, one assumes that rules would be applied and that it would be confined to a space where the only people who would be combatants had agreed to do it.
So it might be people who agreed to be, you know, on the far right, who said, yeah, I hate these Antifa guys.
I want to fight. It'll be fun.
And then Antifa could fight them, and the only people involved on some controlled area, it could be a public park, it could be a stadium, they could fight, get it out of their system.
Once again, I say, it's not a serious suggestion.
This is all in service of getting you to understand that the mentality of Antifa is not primarily political.
And here's why this is important, and here's the part that I didn't say well yesterday, or really say at all.
I just imagined you would connect the dots, but it's not that easy, so I'll do it for you.
Here's why it's important to see it as that their mentality sees it as recreation.
Why that's important is it determines what you do.
Let me say, if I said to you there's a political event, a protest, And you understood it to be a political event.
And it was about something you cared about.
Might be free speech, might be war or no war, but something you care about.
Under those conditions, if I said, and it might be dangerous, should you still go?
The answer is, depends on the topic.
If the topic is very important to you, even though you know it might get dangerous, You might want to go, because free speech is worth fighting for.
Ending war, you know, or avoiding war, that might be worth fighting for.
So if you imagined it was a political event, you could also imagine it would be correct for journalists to cover it, right?
You want a journalist to cover a political event.
If you imagine this political event, I might even recommend that you consider going, even though it's dangerous.
But if you imagine that it's not any of those things, and that that's just a cover for the fact that people enjoy it, what would you do if I said a bunch of people are going to show up at a place, they're probably going to cause some violence, and it's not about politics at all, they just enjoy it? Under those conditions, should a journalist cover it?
Well, if they want to, but they would know what they're getting into.
It's a free country, they could show up, but it wouldn't make sense because it's a sporting event.
Alright? If I said to you, should you attend, knowing that they're only attending for the fun of the fight, I would recommend that you not attend.
In fact, I would recommend that you stay as far away as possible.
Now, is there anything I've said That would suggest I'm in favor of Antifa attacking or that I think it should be legal for Antifa to attack innocent citizens and beat them with clubs.
No. I'm not saying Antifa should get away with violence.
Unless it's like an MMA sporting event where it's a controlled space and there are no innocents who could get in the way and it's scheduled and everybody agrees on what the rules are.
Well, then they can do anything they want to each other and I don't care how much they get earned.
But no, there's no situation in which I'm in favor of legalizing Antifa rioting in the streets and attacking innocent people.
Somebody says, just like Charlottesville, huh?
What does that mean?
What is wrong with you?
All right, here's the important point.
If you would like Antifa to go away, Is it more productive, from your perspective, if you wanted them to go away, to treat them like a political movement, or to treat them like a bunch of people in a sporting event that you can avoid?
Which would be more important if you wanted Antifa to go away?
Well, my claim is that Antifa can be reframed out of existence by simply seeing them as not a political movement.
The moment you give them credibility as a political movement, you give them longevity.
You give them meaning.
As soon as you say, you can do whatever you want, but we just don't want to be there.
And anybody who wants to be there knows what they're getting into.
They're getting into a sporting event in which violence against them is somebody else's entertainment.
Do you want to go there?
Well, if you do want to go there under those conditions, you know what you're getting into.
Now, I would suggest somebody says, please watch Andy Ngo's interview with Brett Weinstein.
No. No.
I'm not going to watch that.
Because there isn't anything that that's going to say that would in any way have any bearing on what I'm talking about right now.
Didn't they go to Tucker Carlson's house?
Oh, that's my favorite dumb question.
What did I say that would suggest I'm in favor of them going to Tucker Carlson's house?
A lot of people imagine that I was in favor of that.
In what way am I in favor of them targeting somebody's family or going to somebody's house?
In no way. Let me be as clear about this as possible, because I can tell that some people are still not getting it.
So this might help you a little bit.
If Antifa attacks somebody who's an innocent, or even just somebody who's exercising free speech, but maybe they were there for a reason, under any of those conditions, I would be completely happy with somebody exercising their Second Amendment rights to end that person's existence.
Is that clear? I'm completely in favor of somebody using their Second Amendment rights to stop Antifa with maximum prejudice any time they attack innocent people with deadly weapons.
Is that clear enough?
Are you okay with that? The people who went to Tucker's house, if they violated the law, and I'm not sure The specifics of law, they should go to prison.
If Antifa attacked anybody who didn't want to be in a fight, they should go to prison.
If Antifa did anything illegal anywhere at any time, they should suffer the legal consequences.
Are you okay with that? Is anybody unclear on the point That I think Antifa should be punished legally for every crime, 100% of them.
No crimes accepted.
Every crime they do, they should be punished for.
Are you okay with that? Does that help at all?
What I'm saying is if you want them to go away, treat them like a sport.
Ignore them when they show up.
Don't go there to engage them.
Now, some people are saying, will they then start making it impossible for conservatives, regular conservatives, to meet and talk about free speech?
To which I say, how important is that?
Is it important that far-right people can meet in public places and argue for free speech?
Well, probably not.
Let me tell you this, or let me give you a case in point.
It is not safe for me to go into, let's say, I'll use the most offensive example just to make the point.
You could not go into a black neighborhood and start screaming the N-word without expecting to get beaten up.
And yet you have free speech, right?
We live in a world where there's free speech.
But if you told me, hey, free speech is so important that I'm going to put a group together, and we're going to go to a black neighborhood, and we're all going to yell the N-word as loud as we can because we want to support our free speech.
If you guys get beat up I don't give a fuck.
I don't care.
Okay, on some level you're protecting your free speech.
I get that.
But you're also being dumb and you're also protecting a right that you already have.
You already have free speech.
It's not being challenged by the government.
The government has made no move against your free speech.
Tech companies are a problem, but that's not technically, constitutionally speaking, free speech.
It's something that has to be addressed.
If some of you were protesting the tech companies and Antifa showed up and caused a fight, that would be kind of a problem.
I'd be more worried about that.
But if somebody's holding a rally To protect a right that they already have and is not being threatened in the slightest way by the government anyway.
The tech companies are a different issue.
But from the government, why is that even important?
Why are the far right groups even having these rallies?
Please trying to take away their freedom of speech.
It's a whole unnecessary thing.
It's as unnecessary as if you got a group together to go to a black neighborhood to yell the n-word because you think you have free speech.
You could do it.
It would be really, really dumb.
It would be bad in every way.
And it wouldn't protect your rights because you already have that right.
It's just dumb to exercise it.
So I saw a video, I don't know if it was an undercover video or not, of Antifa who was planning to protest, I guess, July 6th.
There's going to be some kind of a free speech, right, organized by somebody on the right.
And they had a bunch of people that they were calling out as they would call them Nazis.
And the people that they were calling out as Nazis, you know, with pictures and brief sort of biographies, included just the most generic people on the right, meaning that none of them were Nazis.
I'm not even going to name the names because I don't want to associate the names with the accusation.
But when you actually see Antifa's organization and what they think that they're going to protest against, None of it is serious.
I'll just use one name.
I don't think you'd mind.
They might want to go protest Jack Posobiec.
What? Why does Antifa want to go and protest Jack Posobiec?
What's he doing? What's he doing that they don't like?
I mean, if you think about how weak and ridiculous that is, that they're calling him out by name as somebody that must be stopped, what?
He tweets too much?
Come on! You can't take any of this too seriously.
Now, given that they're organized against him, any of the people who were named in their little slideshow, I... Personally, I wouldn't go.
So if my name had appeared on that slideshow, I would say, darn it.
I wish that I could go and speak in public without any risk, but I still wouldn't go.
Because why would I subject myself to risk to fight for a right I already have?
Free speech. I don't have a right to...
Well, I do have a right...
But I can't expect that if I offend people and go to the wrong place and say the wrong thing that I'm not going to have some consequences.
So I just wouldn't go there.
Now, I've turned down a number of very lucrative speaking offers recently because it's not safe.
In my opinion, it's not safe for somebody who has ever said anything good about President Trump's talents.
It's just not safe for me to go in public.
It's very expensive and I don't like that.
But that's the world I live in.
When things get unsafe, I go other places.
Do you know how many times I've been beaten up in my adult life?
Guess how many times I've ever been the victim of violence in my adult life.
Zero. Zero.
Now, some of that might be luck, but a lot of it is I stay away from dangerous situations.
If you go toward dangerous situations, well, I think you know what you're getting into.
Somebody says, no rules, right?
I don't know what you're talking about.
So those of you who are coming in late are still angry at something you imagine I think that I don't.
In case you have noticed you are losing that right, well, let me go back to the base point again.
You would like Antifa to go away because you think they're eroding your rights.
I would like them to go away because I think they could erode our rights.
So we agree on that.
We'd like Antifa to go away.
You would like them to go away And you would like to apply the least effective way to do that, which is treating them like a legitimate political movement.
I would like them to go away, and the way I'd like to do that is by treating them as a sporting event that should not be taken seriously, and you should remove all of their energy.
Every time you fight with them, they get stronger.
If Antifa says they're going to show up, and you don't, or you leave when they show up, How much are they going to want to show up next time?
If Antifa didn't encounter a fight, how much energy would they have to do it again?
Because it's the fight they want.
I say, starve them of the fun, and you can get rid of them.
Anybody who says that you should fight them on a political level, like with better ideas or more demonstrations, and we'll have more people, and if they fight, we'll fight, and if they get violent, we'll get violent.
All of that is treating them like a political movement.
If you treat them like that, they become that, and they get stronger.
If you treat them like a bunch of idiots who are trying to cause some violence for fun, What would you do if you heard they're going to show up?
You don't show up.
And if they do show up, as soon as you see them, you move in the opposite direction.
You just run away. What would happen eventually?
Would they get stronger because they were winning so much?
No, you would remove all of their fun.
They would stop showing up because they would get all dressed up, they'd get on their helmets, they'd put on their tape, and they'd get their clubs and everything, and they would show up and it would just be them.
Nobody else would be there.
What would they do? Because the whole point was to engage people.
So if you want to win, as I do, if you want to defeat Antifa, As I do.
If you want to avoid violence, certainly against innocents, as I do, you should want to do it in the way that is most effective, not in the way that is guaranteed to make them stronger.
Did Charlottesville make them weaker or stronger?
Stronger. Does fighting with them make them weaker or stronger?
Stronger. If they show up July 6th and the The Proud Boys show up and fight them.
Does Antifa get weaker or stronger?
Stronger. Right?
And what does that do to the Proud Boys?
It turns them into Nazis.
Let me say clearly, because a number of people said that I conflated Proud Boys with Nazis, as far as I understand it, the Proud Boys are not a racial group.
That's not part of their identity.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong.
But I don't believe the Proud Boys are a racist group.
And if somebody thinks that I conflated them with Nazis, that would be the opposite of what I intended, and I don't think I said anything like that.
My understanding is that they might like to show up for the violence as well.
If I'm being honest, the Proud Boys, they might like a fight.
So if the Proud Boys and Antifa get into a fight, honestly, I don't care too much for either one of them.
Meaning that I don't want anybody to get hurt, but if people willingly go into a fight that's optional, if you go into an optional fight, how much empathy am I supposed to have for you if it's optional, if you have the option of being somewhere else?
Do it. So what I said yesterday, which probably caused the confusion, is that I don't know exactly what the Proud Boys stand for.
I do know that they have black members.
So if you have an organization that black people join and other people are calling you a racist organization, well, somebody needs to check some facts because I don't think black people join racist organizations.
At least racist against themselves.
So I think the Proud Boys have a philosophy that's not one that I understand, but it's not one I need to research either.
But as far as I know, they're multiracial, and I would not conflate them with any kind of racist group.
So people are saying the same thing.
They're not racist.
But that does not mean that certain members have not done things that I would dislike.
So let me say that clearly.
Just because the organization is not racist and just because As far as I know, non-racist people are members of it.
That doesn't mean that every single person is a non-racist, just as it doesn't mean that every other large group doesn't have some variety in a bad way.
Somebody says, pick a side, Scott.
I just picked a side.
Are you kidding me?
Could I be more clear?
How can you say, pick a side?
That's all I've done.
I just picked a side as hard as you can pick a side.
I just said I want Antifa to go away.
Is that clear? The Proud Boys are just something I don't know a lot about.
So, you know, they can manage their own lives.
They don't need my help. If they like fighting, they know where to get it.
If they like not fighting, they know how to avoid it.
They can choose. They're adults.
What about Andy Ngo and other journalists they don't like?
Well, here's how Andy Ngo could be safer next time.
Can we agree that we can change the past?
There's nothing I can do today that will help Andy Ngo not get hit on the head, because that already happened.
So if we can agree that the past is not what we're trying to manage, we're trying to manage the present and the future, what should Andy Ngo do in the future to not be hit with an object on the head by Antifa?
Well, he should not attend an Antifa demonstration.
If he gets hit in his life outside of the demonstration, then that person who hit him should go to jail.
I think we agree.
But he can certainly avoid going to another Antifa demonstration because it shouldn't be covered.
It's not a political event, and my understanding is that he covers political events.
It's just not one. And once you understand that, you can marginalize them and treat them the way they are.
All right. New subject, please.
Well, we're kind of out of subjects because it's 4th of July and there's just not a lot happening.
Oh yeah, I guess Iran said that it was going to start processing Nuclear fuel into nuclear weapons grade whatever.
And they would do that if they don't get their way by Monday or something.
I don't know what to make of that because I'm trying to square these two things.
Iran has said we have no intention of making nuclear weapons.
I believe the Ayatollah has said We're not going to do it.
We don't want any nuclear weapons.
But they're also saying that if they don't get some relief from the sanctions, they're saying that they will process the nuclear fuel until it could be nuclear weapons grade.
So Iran's message is we don't want to make nuclear weapons, but we're totally going to make nuclear weapons.
So, I don't know what that's all about.
Sure sounds like they want to make nuclear weapons.
God, I'm seeing a comment here that's just, it makes my head hurt.
Some of these are so dumb.
Somebody's saying, ask Andy no how he feels.
What does that mean?
Seriously. What does it mean when you said in the comments, ask Andy no what he thinks?
What does that mean? Do you imagine that I was happy he got hit in the head?
Do you imagine that I don't think that the person who did it should go to jail for a very long time?
Do you imagine that I think that was a good situation?
What does that question mean?
It makes me crazy.
Now, I know what's happening.
It's just cognitive dissonance because People live in the world where there are two choices.
You're either pro-Antifa or you're against, and there can be no nuance.
So I throw in a little bit of nuance, and people think that I'm in favor of Antifa.
Literally, you couldn't have a worse interpretation.
So let me list the things.
People are begging me to change the topic, but I'm not going to for a moment.
Whatever you do, stop asking me what I think about somebody who got violently attacked.
In every case, I'm not in favor of violent attacks.
Those people should go to jail.
And if somebody uses their Second Amendment rights and solves the situation in the field, totally okay with that.
Are we good?
Are we good? So, if Andy Ngo goes to another Antifa event and gets his ass kicked, let me say this as clearly as possible.
I think that what happened to Andy Ngo is terrible, and whoever did it should be punished.
But if he goes to another one and he gets his ass kicked again, I don't have any sympathy for it.
Okay? Because he should expect it.
Now, this last time, I don't know if he expected it or not, but he certainly expects it now.
So if he goes again, that's just bad thinking.
All right. Somebody says, do you realize that all Antifa has to do is decide that you are a fascist and then justify an attack?
They've already decided that.
What are you talking about?
Antifa already believes that.
Which is why I would not go to an Antifa event.
How do I like it?
Don't like it? So I would like Antifa to go away.
And so I would like to do it the smart way.
And other people would like to do it the dumb way by making them more powerful.
So choose your path.
The smart way or the dumb way. Will Trump replace Pence?
I don't know. I'm thinking not.
I'm thinking not.
They'll come for you.
They've already come for me.
Are you kidding me? They've already come for me.
They've come for me online.
And they certainly come for me financially.
So Antifa and the left have taken 30% of my income.
That's a pretty big hit.
But... That doesn't mean I'm going to go somewhere where they can hit me with a pipe.
I'm not going to do that.
Somebody says, so you're okay with mayhem on the streets?
No, you freaking idiot.
I'm not okay with mayhem on the streets.
You stupid freaking idiot.
You could not be dumber than to say that comment.
Serenity now. There are still people reading this whose bottom line is that I'm okay with rioting in the streets.
I'm sorry that you're so dumb.
There's nothing I can say about that.
You're really stupid. Whoever's saying, what about that guy who was innocent who got hit?
What do you say about that, Scott?
That's a stupid, stupid question.
And you're a stupid, stupid person for asking it.
There's no way around that.
I try not to say that, but, man, sometimes stupid is just stupid.
All right. I'm just reading your comments now.
Can we discuss Iran and the border crisis?
Well, Iran, there's not much happening except their new threat to process their nuclear fuel to weapons-grade And the border, there's nothing new happening this week.
So I think I'm going to end this because I'm just getting too annoyed at the people who somehow believe that I'm in favor of violence, unless people are doing it willingly.
All right, that's all for now.
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