In the wake of the horrific murder of YouTuber Heather “Ivy” Anable, apparently at the hands of Aleksandr Kolpakov, one of her fellow cohosts of the Skeptic Feminist Youtube channel, some of YouTube’s most noxious personalities got together for a nearly two-and-a-half hour livestream dealing with the tragedy.
The livestreamers in question included the noxious Sargon of Akkad — I’ve written about him several times before — alongside lesser-known YouTube shitheads called Vee and Kraut and Tea, among others.
Despite the ostensible subject, the livestream turned out to be a rather lighthearted affair, full of jokes at the expense of the murdered woman and lots of what the participants called “gallows humor.” (There were similar outbursts of inappropriate mirth from antifeminists on Twitter and elsewhere online, as I detailed in a post yesterday.)
YouTuber Michael Rowlands has done us all a service by clipping some of the worst moments from the livestream and putting them in a thankfully much, much shorter video of his own. It’s only 8 minutes long, and you can skip the first minute or so, but I think it manages to capture the odiousness of Sargon and pals quite effectively.
Just a note of explanation: Rowlands’ video is designed to highlight the blatant hypocrisy of YouTuber Kraut and Tea. The first half consists of a clip from a Kraut and Tea video patting anti-SJW YouTubers on the back for their alleged moral superiority over SJWs. The second half is a clip from the notorious livestream, which pretty clearly shows what complete bullshit his claims of moral superiority really are.
I set the start of the video a little ahead to bypass some of Kraut and Tea’s more tedious bloviating and get right to his main point.
https://youtu.be/E-93X8sVI_E?t=1m28s
Thanks to commenter IshinDenshin for letting me know about this video. If you want to watch the whole livestream (ugh) you can find it here.
Oh yeah, Moocow!
In that case, I second the motion.
@ gussie
This is so weird. Just been discussing exactly the same points on Varalys’ blog. Even down to the YOLT references.
I think the (or a) reason that Kevin and other youtubers are able to stay on “friendly” terms with the scum of youtube is because they are white dudes. The same reason why it was mostly white dudes making a huge stink about voting for Hillary even when the alternative was Trump. Sure, they might think their views on women and minorities are appalling but it won’t really effect them so might as well try and get some recognition in videos with them. Unless they just really enjoy talking to scumbags, I don’t think any of the lefty white youtube dudes are dumb enough to think they’ll be changing the minds of assholes who hide behind cartoons.
Honestly, that’s one of the reasons I have more respect for Steve Shives for just flat out refusing to entertain bigoted jerks as if their ideas were worth entertaining.
@Gussie Jives:
Well, in anime, Rurouni Kenshin (a.k.a. Samurai X in one of the earlier translations) is set in 1878, during the early years of the Meiji Restoration; the effective ‘demobilization’ of the forces during the previous civil war, the active disbanding of the samurai class, and the opening up of Japan to the outside are significant parts of the series. (They end up on a steam train late in the first season, and a Dutch ambassador is a plot-critical character during the third season.) So it’s a rather deliberate exception to the Tokugawa-fetish that seems to plague a lot of Japanese pop culture.
As for ancestry, my usual description is that I’m part English, part Irish, part Scottish, and part German. I argue with myself a lot. Mostly I’m Canadian, as I was born here, both parents were born here, all four grandparents were born here, I think all but one of my great-grandparents were born here, and some of my ancestors have been here since before it was called Canada. The Irish fleeing the potato famine were relatively late arrivals.
(The Germans were actually Palatines, who moved to England after the French took over the Palatinate, then moved to New England, and then fought on the English side of the American Revolution and so moved to British North America before it became Canada and got land grants from the Crown for being United Empire Loyalists. If I really wanted to put on airs, I legally could put ‘U.E.’ after my name for that, as the distinction is considered hereditary. It just doesn’t mean much, as being able to call yourself ‘U.E.’ is about the only real benefit of it.)
@Sandra
I want Scotland, but you can have the rest of the Isles. And the Low Countries too, if you’d like.
I could tell you stories…
@booburry
The problem is that a lot of them don’t appear to actually care about those things. It’s a purely intellectual exercise for them. They laugh and chat with the other white dudes offscreen, because they think it’s a debating society. Some of them are mostly sincere but willing to cut other (especially white) dudes a lot of slack for being apalling. Others are actually just as appalling, but argue the feminist side out of contrarianism or camouflage. This is why it’s kind of a truism that non-men should be extremely wary of men who make a big fuss about how feminist they are.
As an example, see Jian Ghomeshi.
@Gussie Jives:
I would not disagree whatsoever – I was that way, at one point.
That isn’t to say I’m embarrassed that my interest in Japanese culture came from their art and entertainment, because a lot of it does resonate with me on some level and is as good a gateway as any, but of exoticizing it as I did based purely on such.
My real appreciation actually came from distancing myself from things like anime a bit because, honestly, “otaku” culture really got on my nerves (much like it did with Hayao Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon). Though this is around the same time I began to develop a dislike of fandom in general (and it only gets worse).
When you actually look into its past history as a country, there are things that are as interesting as they are terrifying and – in the present – isn’t without a number of problems that simply remind you, like any other national culture, there’s nothing exotic about them. They, like any group of people, can be as admirable as they can be despicable and capable of great accomplishments as well as unforgivable atrocities.
@Dali
Yes, my line is most famous for briefly holding onto the crown and then dropping it in the face of William the Conqueror’s landing.
I just like the sound of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha house. In all actuality, I should be calling myself Francesca I of Mercia and my seat should be in Lichfield, and I should be busy plowing dykes and whatnot, since that was the done thing back then.
@Alan
I’m actually not too surprised about this, since I knew about the supposedly African in origin Ivory Lady of York. Apparently she was a rich and powerful Roman lady of some standing.
See you at the Big Bang Burger Bar. I’ve got a Disaster Area show to catch.
@All, Re: Japan
While I am very much a big anime-and-manga-and-Japanese Pop Culture I actually have studied Imperial Japan and their conquest by fire and blood to a great extent. I am very much familiar with the prevailing nationalist attitudes of that time, and the claims of racial superiority that were so very much in vogue then.
My favorite thing to read about is the Imperial Japanese Navy. I fantasize about standing on the deck of the Mikasa.
It’s odd; I have a strange fascination with harsh, unyielding empires.
I think the British Empire was just splendid, in spite of the fact that they subjugated half of Africa and enslaved my people. Whenever I look at a map of the British Empire I swell with pride even though I had absolutely nothing to do with it, really.
I quite enjoy Imperial Roman History, even though they spent a great deal of time killing, conquering, and enslaving innocent women and children.
I’m not sure what it is that draws me to these things.
However, my relationship with Japan is complicated by the fact that I am black and I’m not gonna mince words: Japanese people kinda fucking hate black people.
I am even familiar with their homegrown n-word: kurombo, a derogatory term for black people.
It’s nothing personal, in my opinion.
Lots of people hate black people. Even black people hate other black people. 😀 I’m not going to tear myself apart over it.
And, at any rate, the Japanese dislike anyone who isn’t Japanese.
In full knowledge of this fact, I would still move to Japan, if such a thing were possible. I have always said that if I become attached to a rich and powerful global corporation that has its headquarters in Japan, and they assign me as a corporate executive or something similarly powerful and glamorous, I’d go there like a shot.
Not for me your little English teaching jobs. They are contemptuous of English teachers. If I emigrate to Japan, I would like to be there in a prestigious role – a scientist, doctor, or elite businesswoman.
If I’m going to teach Japanese people I’d like to be a Professor, goddamn it.
It is exceedingly difficult to immigrate to Fortress Japan.
It’s funny, really: the two Island Empires I love so much, Britain and Japan, both dislike black people and foreigners.
As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t really have a wild bee in my bonnet about the intensely provincial nature of the British; I even find it quaint.
Similarly, I can’t really find it in my to get angry about the Japanese pretense to superhuman superiority over us foreign devils.
I understand Britain has gotten a little better about this, but it is still somewhat difficult to move to Britain…Theresa May wants to build a wall…/sigh.
I assume that my intense Anglophilia is probably due to my royal Anglo-Saxon blood being desirous to return to its origin, perhaps.
I’ve had a project simmering away on the back boiler of my mind of an alternate universe historical fiction novel examining the similarities between the reclusive Fortress Britannica and Fortress Japan and their respective dislike of black people:
The continental plates of Earth are arranged in such a way that Britain and Japan are both on opposite sides of Africa. This gives us a chance to see an exchange of this sort in action:
And perhaps the respect British and Japanese Empires both have colonies on the eastern and western coasts of Africa, echoing their actions in our world.
@NickNameNick
Bingo. That’s the key. Every country has its heroes and scoundrels. I’m pretty proud of my country, yet I take care to note the unsavoury aspects of its past in an effort to ensure they’re not repeated. It’s part of the reason I find myself somewhat put off by the rampant romanticization of America’s Revolution and Founding Fathers. Sure, small-r republican governance was a radical new thing in 1776 and throwing off the rule of a distant aristocracy was an important step in responsible government around the world, but the Founders largely failed to live up to their lofty promises (slavery being the most glaring example) and these enduring myths have only held America back where other nations have taken the lead. It’s not like Canadian politicos go around wondering “how would the Fathers of Confederation have handled this?” Unless it was followed up with “Oh, better not do that.”
Seriously, my country’s first PM was a drunk Scotsman who took bribes from railway companies. Not to say he didn’t do his share of great things following Confederation, but his obvious racism towards the aboriginal population and Chinese rail workers put to rest any cults of personality.
I could write a book.
It bloody well wasn’t, and that’s a part of the myth that’s most fucking annoying to me. The United Provinces had been a republic for centuries already, not to mention the Most Serene Republic of Venice, the Iroquois Confederacy, the Swiss Confederation, the Republic of Salé… I could go on.
Except for the part where it was replaced by a local aristocracy, of course.
And the genocide, can’t forget that. One of the colonists’ big grievances was that the Crown wouldn’t let them steal any land west of the Appalachians, and they really, really wanted to.
@Gussy Jives:
Throwing up in the houses of Parliament due to drinking too much probably didn’t help either, no matter what witty quote he said afterward. That said, it was the obvious bribes from the railway companies and his completely unrepentant attitude about it that sank him at the time.
@Dalillama:
I’ve long had the impression, based on some of my reading of history, that one of the main reasons the U.S. South bought into the revolution to start with was that the plantation owners were angry that England wasn’t treating them as the landed aristocracy they obviously felt they were. They figured the ‘equality for all men’ stuff from Washington and Franklin would last a few years, tops, before dissolving into chaos and then they could just take over as the superior people they inherently were.
(Writing that strikes me with how similar that is to some of the apocalypse-fetishism in the manosphere.)
Well, of course, the South got a fair bit of what they asked for simply because New England needed the troops the South could provide.
Also, yeah, the fact that the ‘Founding Fathers’ used the Iroquois Confederacy as one of their sources when writing up the original Constitution and laying out the proposed government is one of those things that is frankly very notable by its absence in most teaching of U.S. history.
@Jenora Feuer
It was much more calculated than that. Plantation owners already did run everything in the Southern colonies to suit themselves, and wanted to keep it that way. They fought for things that would ensure that they maintained the political and economic clout they already had, so they could continue to act like a landed aristocracy. And it worked, they did continue, doing just that, and in some cases still do.
@Fran:
Certainly doesn’t help wearing blackface has something of a subculture among young women referred to as “ganguro”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganguro
That sounds eerily similar to now-archaic “sambo”…
Yep. Thus terms like “gaijin.”
@Gussie Jives:
As a U.S. citizen, it’s a pretty big bugbear of mine too. I can’t fucking stand it when people quote Thomas Jefferson – one of the most sadistic slave owners of his time and a serial rapist to boot – about freedom. At least John Adams and Thomas Paine weren’t fond of slavery, the latter being more vocal about such than the earlier.
Even with as problematic of a game as it is, Bioshock Infinite portraying George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson being worshiped as if they were Greek gods – even with statues akin to such deities – is pretty accurate with how we mythologize and deify people who (let’s all be honest) were a bunch of bigoted, classist assholes that happened to be prominent landowners rather than scrappy underdog laborers fighting for the average person (’cause that’d be too socialist!).
Despite the fact we don’t have an official aristocracy, it isn’t too hard to view the current economic system and those at the top as a corporate version of feudal aristocracy. It’s why, rather than using birthright, right-wing libertarians like to push this notion that we live in a “meritocracy” to justify wealth inequality – forgetting that many of the richest people on the planet are so because their parents already were before their birth. Not to mention many wealthy people make bad investments or incredibly incompetent decisions, yet are rarely punished by losing their wealth or put in jail (even when they should). They can still succeed even in complete failure – unlike everyone else lower on the social ladder. So, like aristocracy, I see it as invalid due to such. It isn’t established because it works or even an effective form of governance – but because it props up disproportionate privilege, even if to everyone else’s detriment, that the affluent erroneously assume is somehow inherently “deserved.”
Oh, forgot to add this in my reply to Fran:
I’ve joked with other people, due to the similarities between both nations (such as them being islands and having an antagonistic relationship with the mainland continent it is close to as well as a cultural emphasis on politeness and etiquette which nonetheless has a dark undercurrent about it), that Britain is Bizzaro Japan and Japan is Bizzaro Britain.
When I found out the Dark Souls games were ridiculously popular with a British audience – my reaction was basically “eh, makes sense…”
@NickNameNick
Also, Britain and Japan both had civil wars that were epic in scale, a rich history of poetry, science, artwork, civil engineering, exploration…Japan had a powerful naval force, and Britannia Ruled The Waves, as we all know.
I take it you’re interested in my alt-history novel pitch, then?
Another thing about Japan: their pop-culture has almost no fucking black people in it.
There’s tonnes of white women and white men in anime and manga, and almost no black people – and often they hamfistedly display black men as murder-rapists and black women as coarse sluts.
Kousuke Fujishima depicted the Norse Goddess Urd as a black woman, and she’s relatively normal, except of course for being a little lewd and liking to show people her breasts and thighs (overtones of the Jezabel stereotype there).
Another thing I always wanted to do – when I get my drawing skills up to par, or unless some manga artist signs me on through a miracle – to make a series about a very normal and nice and friendly little black girl who does a slice-of-life type thing as an exchange student at a Japanese school.
Of course I wouldn’t shy away from portraying the native Japanese at their racist attitudes, but for the most part it would be very positive and intended to foster a sense of unity between the Japanese and the Black people, mainly.
I was inspired by this panel:
It would much follow the same formula: our little black heroine experiences someone being mean to her, but then someone else is nice to her and helpful.
I’ve been told that my maternal grandmother was decedent from minor german nobility in alsace lorraine (now part of France): the unfortunately named Schmuck family. Not like that means much. The reason my ancestor came to America was because he wasn’t the first born son, and was set to inherit jack shit.
I like it when Norse deities are portrayed as black if nothing else, for the purposes of mocking the alt-right tears. A couple years before the internet started crawling with out and proud white nationalists, I had my first run in online with one of them in an Io9 thread about Idris Elba playing Heimdall. He was mighty upset that I have Norwegian and Swedish ancestry and didn’t mind the casting. More than didn’t mind. Liked. Who’s going to complain about looking at Idris Elba? It was my first time being called a race traitor.
Ah, memories.
@ fran
Technically the famous anthem is an injunction not a description.
It’s Britannia rule the waves, not ‘rules’.
Basically it’s saying make sure you have the biggest navy if you want to keep Britain safe. So it’s more campaigning for something rather than bragging.
@Alan
There is a very funny history book called 1066 And All That, which is a retelling of British History with a very Wodehousian flair.
I enjoy reading British lit quite a lot if you have not gathered that already.
This is what it had to say about the Rule Britannia, wherein it is actually a piece of legislation introduced by the intrepid King Alfred The Cake (that’s what he is called here).
@WWTH
Just for you, here’s a screencap of Fujishima-san’s interpretation of Urd.
And of course she’s showing off.
Holy crap, I could look at Idris Elba all day long. That man is not only spectacular to look at, he is a superb actor.
If that makes me a “race traitor”, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@PeeVee
Hey, hey, HEY! Stop it. NnnnNO! Bad! #WhiteGenocide
Speaking of which, I’ve been thinking of starting up a Patreon page dedicated to White Genocide. Anybody interested?
You didn’t hear this from me, but I have picked up some scuttlebutt alluding to Idris’s massive…tract of land.
Yes.
Land.
You’ll get no more from me. M’lips are sealed. Wink’s as good as a nod to me, and so on.
http://68.media.tumblr.com/f9806e179a6c1374185061c7b1967345/tumblr_inline_mlj8meVRpn1qz4rgp.gif
@ IP:
I know…
Bad, bad PeeVee! Oh, wicked, bad, naughty PeeVee!
@Francesca,
I sure as hell wouldn’t mind checking out the neighbor’s tract of land if the view over the fence was Idris Elba.