Here’s a tricky little etiquette question for our age: What does one do when one finds oneself with admirers who are, well, perhaps just a teensy bit fascist?
If you’re a presidential candidate with an orangish hue and a deep dislike of Muslims, you pretend you know nothing about them, even though you retweet some of them on what seems to be a fairly regular basis.
If you’re the YouTube bloviator who calls himself Sargon of Akkad, you see their support as a FLAWLESS VICTORY.
Sargon — not the head honcho of the Akkadian Empire but rather the obnoxious YouTuber who recently started that petition to “Suspend Social Justice in Universities” — recently got a shout-out from one of the speakers at a rally of the English Defence League, a group of far-right do-gooders who think the best way to do good for England is to rail about Muslims and beat people up.
That’s the EDL guy in the picture above, who came to the rally with a little Sargon of Akkad sign and everything.
Sargon’s response:
If I can make racists praise universal freedoms, individual rights and the highest moral fortitude, I win. https://t.co/r9zOdlXj1T
— Carl Benjamin (@Sargon_of_Akkad) May 10, 2016
Well, that’s one way of looking at it, I guess.
Here’s some footage of EDL members demonstrating their brand of “moral fortitude” to the general public:
And here’s one idealistic young EDLer expressing his love of individual rights and universal freedoms:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjuNuqIev8M
So congratulations, Sargon of Akkad — actually Carl Benjamin of Swindon — on your big win.
And while I’m on the subject of Carl of Swindon, I should note that I made a TRAGIC ERROR in my post about his dumb petition against “Social Justice in Universities.” At one point, I declared that “[t]here aren’t any departments of Social Justice that I’m aware of.”
It turns out that there are some departments of Social Justice that I was not aware of.
Carl of Swindon devoted a considerable portion of one of his videos to pointing this out.
Then, instead of clarifying whether or not his petition was aimed only at these departments of Social Justice, he railed against several academics — well, a recently fired professor and a grad student — who were not actually connected to any departments of Social Justice.
Also, for some reason — my memory is a bit foggy here — he decided to weigh in on trans issues, quoting an anti-trans hate group that has tried to disguise itself as a professional organization of pediatricians as if it were in fact a professional organization of pediatricians.
Note to Carl of Swindon: When making terrible transphobic videos in the future, try to remember that the American College of Pediatricians is a transphobic hate group — literally designated as such by the Southern Poverty Law Center — with perhaps 200 members. The American Academy of Pediatrics, with 60,000 members, is the actual professional organization.
Hope this helps!
Sooooooo… has he stopped pretending to be a liberal yet?
@ varylis
I was once doing a criminal case about an accountant who’d ‘borrowed’ some of his clients’ money. In mitigation I explained to the judge that there was no need to deal with compensation as “the victims have agreed that the Shin Beth will take care of the matter”
The judge remarked “Isn’t that a bit drastic?”
I had of course meant to refer to the Beth Din rather than the Israeli intelligence agency.
Heh, my mum is a retired lawyer who worked for the city council prosecuting council tax defaulters and housing benefit cheats and I always got the impression from her that most judges have a pretty dry sense of humour.
She actually had to deal with those Freemen of the Land types quite often (there seemed to be quite afew down in Plymouth), when I was visiting I had to listen to her ranting about them. So I got quite a kick telling her about that Colon Nolan fella I read about in some old posts here!
@ varylis
Yeah, I think judges need to develop that just to cope with some of the nonsense they have to deal with. “Time Out” magazine once had an article about the top 10 free days out in London and one of the suggestions was to go watch a particular judge at Wood Green Crown Court. In my experience Coroners have a pretty quirky sense of humour too. You can see why that would be as a coping mechanism.
I was reminded of the FOTL lot with that post about Candace Owens. A lot of similar features (the grandiosity, the conspiracy theories, the demanding that anyone perceived as an enemy should be imprisoned) but especially the way the FOTL people exploit people like that and wind them up.
As for Plymouth I once broke my golden rule (always assume everything you write may one day find itself in front of a judge) and some emails I’d exchanged with counsel for the other side ended up in evidence. In those emails my learned opponent, who was from up north, had asked about Plymouth.
At the end of the hearing the judge directed the tape recorder be turned off.
“Mr Robertshaw, ‘there are some nice restaurants and the lighthouse is worth seeing, but the court itself is a right dump and smells of piss’?”
Ask your mum though, I bet she backs me up on that.
I shall indeed ask her. I also lived in Plymouth for two years and it’s a nice city if a bit run down these days. But it does have many good restaurants, there is a seafood one on the waterfront that just does amazing food, I always demanded to go there on my birthday. I think though my days of city living are past me, I’ve lived in Macclesfield for ten years now which is the longest I have ever lived anywhere ever and still love it here, I do miss the diversity of Manchester though. I lived in Rusholme the ZOMG evul Muzlims bit of the city (to return to the topic) and never felt unsafe there, not even staggering out of my flat at 0500 after a nights gaming in search of a shami kebab.
@ varylis
Yeah, the County Court did sort of epitomise that. It was borderline derelict. Plymouth is the nearest place to Cornwall with a Gregg’s though.
After 15 years in London I’m with you on city life (hence now being in the sticks), but I do have some great memories of Manchester back in my mis-spent youth. Funnily enough my Manchester girlfriend at the time’s lodger was the brother of one of the Macc Lads. Small world eh?
And I grew up in Bradford so the ‘evil Muslims’ thing is just daft to me. I have had some pretty heated debates with some of my Muslim friends about their weird and completely ridiculous beliefs; but in the end we agreed to mutually tolerate our respective views on who was the best Dr Who.
(It’s Tom Baker)
Unfortunately, it’s probably a garbled reference to the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal. He’s actually saying ‘Muslamic rape gangs’:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Muslamic_ray_guns
ETA: Ninjas upon ninjas…
Interesting to hear that there are Chinese and Jewish analogues to Sharia courts. But I feel I should point out that at least some Sharia courts hold that it takes two female witnesses to equal one male witness, daughters inherit half as much as sons, wife beating is normal as long as it follows the rules laid down in the Koran etc. Also a non-trivial proportion of British Muslim women don’t speak much English and don’t necessarily know that there are other options available. I’m sure the Daily Fail exaggerates the problems, but they exist.
I use “Nonreligious;” I’ve found that it gets across “I don’t believe in any gods, but I’m NOT one of those hateful hypocritical Dawkinsian asstheists” in only one word.
I use ‘Agnostic Atheist’ because it’s true and the first part pisses the asshats off.
@ Scildfreja
Ha! Nicely done.
Sheila Crosby:
Oh, that’s staggeringly advanced! I mean, what with in USA, it takes fifty women to accuse a man of rape before anybody believes even one. /sarcasm
I use atheist because fuck if I’m going to let a smattering of assholes take over a completely neutral and harmless label.
Thanks. I wouldn’t say I grew up sane as my family has a lot of mental health problems. Some have schizophrenia, others have different disorders. I have the exact same mental health illness as my dad (unsure if it’s classed as chronic depression or major depressive disorder) so I definitely have my issues. I wouldn’t even say I grew up unharmed as I still internalise beliefs about myself that I learned then and also had to overcome addiction as drugs and excessive alcohol were considered normal – I’m now 9 years clean and work in addiction recovery services. But I’d say I grew up with a comprehensive understanding of bigotry and a strong passion to challenge it wherever possible, even if it means violent repercussions.
@OoglyBoggles asshats like Sargon, The Amazing Atheist, and Mr Repzion drove me away from atheism so much that I eventually became a Wiccan. Some nights I think about how they’d possibly react to being told their videos actually encouraged someone to take up a religion and giggle.
This is a link to what the AAP thinks about trans folks: https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/gradeschool/Pages/Gender-Non-Conforming-Transgender-Children.aspx
The gist is that it’s normal, gender identity can’t be changed, and the most important thing is that kids feel loved and supported.
I think the Dead Kennedys had the right response here:
But everyone else is a regressive, huh? Cos we’re the ones giving cover and support to the illiberal, right? Just wanting to make sure…
Also donchaknow, the SPLC is supadupes biased… supposedly. Something, something, ethics…
@Scildfreja
http://persephonemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/psych-shawn-gus-thats-dope.gif
Ayn Rand has the same problem. If you actually break down the sentences she writes (even descriptive ones) you’ll notice they make no sense at all. Throwing random words together to create confusing nonsense is a staple of this school of thought.
All my maternal family are Conservatives, proper Daily Maul reading Queen worshipping “christians” . I’ve noticed this slippery slope heading towards actual fascism in my family and family friends. I watched a few videos from Sargon as they were re commended based on other stuff I’d been watching. They were pretty reactionary and unintelligible. I used to live near the community centre and always knew when there was a BNP rally going on because of all the noise when I was trying to sleep. The police came out on more than one occasion, and that was only in Bognor which is a quiet seaside town where not much goes on.
@Alan:
Summed up by one coroner’s assistant I knew who, when asked what he did for a living, would shiftily look around, lean in, and conspiratorially whisper: “I see dead people.”
It’s basically the master level Gish Gallop, where your wrongness manages to be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
On the Sharia courts thing–I have the same issue with them as with most private arbitration panels. I simply have no confidence in them to be unbiased in cases where the people coming before them are not true peers. In a Sharia court, this would most definitely include women who are attempting civil litigation against a man. Such panels are often part of contracts when you buy electronics and the like, too, so you’re required to go through the arbitration to file any sort of civil claim.
@ Jenora
Brilliant!!!
I was at an event where a Coroner was at great pains to point put that ‘Quincy’ (in the TV show) was not, as is sometime said, a coroner but instead an ME/Pathologist.
“What’s the difference?”
“Coroner requires great skill and intelligence. Pathologist is the easiest job in the world?”
“How come?”
“It’s surgery on dead people. How can you fuck that up?”
I know next to nothing about philosophy (though I do have some interest in learning), so excuse me if what I am thinking is wrong. I know a tiny bit about objectivism. You think it was she that originated this entire “I am a 100% unbiased individual! Emotions are bad! Altruism is stupid!” school of thought these toxic atheists (and dare I say the manosphere in general) seem to follow and spit around?
So maybe this way of speaking bulshit veiled in self proclaimed smartness and objectivity is inherent to this “philosophy”, and that’s why they all sound the same? Instead of a bunch of dumbasses corrupting a philosophy, the very philosophy was written by a dumbass and that’s just the way its supposed to be, and what they say is not even ROOTED in reason? Its bulshit fruits, coming from a bulshit tree, that comes from bulshit seeds? That’s very interesting. I’d love to know more. Do philosophy academics think its bulshit too, in general?
If my philosophy teacher in high school was any indication, yes, Ayn Rand’s stuff is widely considered bullshit. She gave us a list of “the people you must never, ever quote at an exam”, and Ayn Rand was actually the very first name on it. She also dedicated about an hour of class to deconstructing the thought of some of those “philosophers” – I bet these days she does the same with some RoK dudes for her current students.