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!
@Axecalibur
Everything related to gender identity is debated all the time here at the moment. I don’t know if this is something that might actually happen anytime soon, but it’s definitely something that has been on the agenda for the more left wing parties over the last few years.
—
About numbers and 6’s: when we signed up for our internet service in our old apartment, we were assigned a random 10-digit password. We got ten sixes. Seriously. I called the provider to receive the number by phone, and this was the conversation I had with the woman on the other end:
Me: I need the password to setup my internet connection.
Woman: Okay, are you ready?
Me: Yup.
Woman: It’s… 6
Me: Yeah.
Woman: 6 again.
Me: Yeah.
Woman: Hold on… umm… well, it’s ten 6’s.
Me: What?
Woman: The number is 6666666666.
Me: Wow.
Woman: That’s… amazing.
Me: That’s a randomized number?
Woman: Yes. I don’t know what to say.
Me: Me neither. We should hang up now.
Of course, the fun part is that ten sixes is exactly as likely as any other ten-digit number.
Humans are too good at pattern matching to be any good at all at dealing with randomness.
Of course, the reason that ‘666’ was a problem to start with is the whole ‘number of the beast’ thing. There are places in the U.S. that will deliberately add an extra penny to the bill if the after-tax amount would come to $6.66 to avoid having customers freak out on them.
Sure, but the likelihood of a number with such an obvious pattern is much smaller than a number that “seems random”.
My mom got a cashier who was concerned over the $6.66 ringup she’d just made. Mom, for her part, found it amusing and told her not to worry.
I had told this anecdote to a person after I’d gotten a $6.66 ringup, though this cashier wasn’t concerned at all (he may not have even noticed– it was very early in the morning).
Only after I left did I realize it’d probably come to that amount because I impulsively purchased a devil’s food doughnut, and sighed for the joke that couldn’t be made.
I hear a lot of $6.66 stories. I wonder what these people think will happen if they complete the transaction. Bad luck? Ruinous curse? Demonic possession? Actual hellbeasts rising from the sea and bringing about the End of Days? Or are they worried that all proceeds from the sale will be funnelled on to the Gay Satans Society for Undermining Christian Civilisation?
@Diptych
If that were to actually happen on a consistent basis I’d bet good money that some corporation would literally try to harness the powers of hell to supercharge a new energy industry.
To be fair I would to.
Demonic energy. Sacrilegious? Yes. Unholy? Yes. Environmentally friendly? Yes. Lasts forever? Absolutely.
I’d want to see an environmental impact study on the sulfur emissions.
@katz well you see katz my PR supervisor has told me that the sulfur emissions are mainly trace amounts, only enough to leave a distinct odor and a flash. To explain further on the particular reasons why our teleportation system necessitates and dark and red smokes into order to efficiently and safely transport persons and objects across vast differences, would be a breach of contract.
I however can illustrate how even our more flashier versions of transporting mass amounts of good instantaneously do not cause long term global warming. As you will see in the parchment hidden in the ram skull in your closet you can find multiple third party analysts links and papers, showing that we do not in fact cause global warming through our methods of travel.
@pitshade
“As for self defense, it’s not whether PS is useful or acceptable in all circumstances, but rather that referring to it as a ‘defensive’ weapon implies that it can’t be used offensively, and thus is somehow more acceptable than other forms of weaponry.”
Fair point. Although, I’m still not too too bothered by girls (or boys) over 18 carrying it, even at school. And everyone should have to get a permit. Although I can see how it’s stupid, as well.
It’s the weird fixation with bathrooms that gets me. How exactly is being alone with a dangerous person in a bathroom any different than being alone with them in any other secluded spot? When are we going to start gender segregating stairwells? Or the library?
It’s honestly not just transfolk. I always make the argument that gender segregating bathrooms hurts fathers who need to be able to help their young daughters in the bathroom. Nope, nope, these fathers are perverts too. All men (and transwomen) are perverted rapists, and yet *I’m* the manhater.
OoglyBoggles:
I don’t know. There’s always the risk of opening a portal to hell and starting Armageddon which as we all know would be an ecological disaster.
@Zatar
While that is true that Armageddon could be caused by residential nhilist factions within the Underground, that would be no less disastrous as the ever presence of nuclear warfare. As on Earth there are multiple upon multiple nations that have differing agendas of differing scopes, so does the residents of Hell. While some would love nothing more than to cause nothing but harm and mass destruction, an equal amount in number and power would prefer otherwise. In the case of a particular faction gaining enough notoriety, my, superiors would take the necessary measures to ensure the perpetrators and their plans to be, taken care of.
Should your nations find some interest in the affairs of my Supervisors and Their residents, please, do so. We only wish for cooperation. All you have to do is call Their names, and They’ll show up immediately as the professionals they uphold themselves to be.
@OoglyBoggles(‘s hypothetical corporation)
http://www.techspot.com/images2/news/bigimage/2014/10/2014-10-09_14-17-25.gif
I’m watching you bastards.
A lot of the anti-trans-bathroom people will admit that it’s never been a problem before, but say now that the subject has been brought up, it might give predators the idea to pretend to be trans in order to enter women’s restrooms.
In other words, it might become a problem if someone brought it up, so they brought it up in order to have a problem to fix. And coincidentally, the solution puts things back the way they were before bringing it up, except that it makes life worse for trans people, genderqueer people, fathers with daughters, and cis people who occasionally get mistaken for members of the opposite sex.
Yeah, even if you buy the assumptions behind the argument, it’s still a terrible argument.
@mrex
As far as the bathroom thing relates to trans people, these are the only real gender segregated places that most people interact with in this society. As such, they are the only ‘club’ left for bigots to hit trans people with. They can’t attack someone for using the ‘wrong’ checkout line or whatnot because those places aren’t segregated. Bathrooms are segregated though and using the right one is emotionally significant. That makes it an avenue through which bigots can attack – and that’s what this is ultimately about. They aren’t defending anything, just trying to hurt people that they hate.
Is there anything we can do to help the North Carolinans? Someone to write to or something?
Also, according to Stephen Fry, the Number of the Beast is actually 616.
@ EJ
It’s 616 in the earliest versions of Revelation.
One theory is that originally it was a numerological representation of Nero and then later it was changed to be Diocletian.
Is the EDL the English equivalent of America’s KKK?
Sam Victors:
Not really, it doesn’t have the same sort of history of violence as KKK. (Yet.)
More like… Tea Party’s deeply racist end with people who are sort of KKK wannabes.
Here’s some more of the EDL being respectful and solemn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB8wa3BGAwg