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Sargon Of Akkad | Why Are We Facing A Crisis In 2020?

Sargon Of Akkad is a British political commentator and a YouTuber. 2020 has had some serious history occur, and we’re only halfway finished. I wanted to get Carl on to try and cut through the mud and work out just why everything has come to a head. Extra Stuff: Subscribe to Sargon on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCitU2-w3XE8ujvUZjcAnhIg Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ #sargonofakkad #socialjustice #chriswilliamson - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: modernwisdompodcast@gmail.com

Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad)guestChris Williamsonhost
Jul 21, 20201h 12mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 15:00

    It's totally valid to…

    1. CA

      It's totally valid to feel like we're in sort of Fall of the Republic territory here, because we are. I mean, this is, uh, you know, probably something like crisis of the third century if we're comparing Western civilization to Rome. Uh, so we've pro- we've- I think we probably do have a couple hundred years left to go. Uh, but I think it's evident that whatever we've been doing to bring us to this point is leading us on a path to destruction. (wind blows)

    2. CW

      Are you the most demonetized man on the internet?

    3. CA

      Um, (laughs) possibly. Uh, well, I mean-

    4. CW

      (laughs)

    5. CA

      ... a lot, a lot of people have also been demonetized, so, uh, y- not including The Federalist, though, apparently.

    6. CW

      (laughs)

    7. CA

      They just had to turn off their comments section at Google's behest, otherwise they would've been. But yeah, Zero Hedge, Steven Crowder, myself, and a bunch of other people, Count Dankula, you know, we've- we all get demonetized because we say things that are not very politically correct, I suppose.

    8. CW

      It's happened twice-

    9. CA

      But-

    10. CW

      ... to you now though, right?

    11. CA

      It has. Yeah.

    12. CW

      So what- what was the-

    13. CA

      Three times, actually. Actually, four times now I think about it. (laughs)

    14. CW

      (laughs) You are- dude, that's the title. That title is yours to take.

    15. CA

      I know. (laughs) It's happened a lot. Um, it's- it's just because I talk about things that the progressives also talk about, but I don't talk about them in a progressive way. And so, I'm a bad person.

    16. CW

      So what's the current make up of your YouTube-iverse at the moment?

    17. CA

      Uh-

    18. CW

      'Cause you've got multiple channels, right?

    19. CA

      Yeah, the only one I really use at the moment is a Cad Daily, 'cause I'm currently setting up a website, um, to do the same sort of things through. Um, and I'll start a podcast and other things after I've done that, so I'm just using this one at the moment.

    20. CW

      Got you. And then you've still got the- like, the old archived-y one, the grandfathered one?

    21. CA

      Yeah, yeah, but, um, YouTube have, uh, quarantined it in some way. So w- and- and I tested this the other day. On my new channel, uh, I've got 300,000 subscribers, and if I put up a video, within the first, like, 18 hours, I'll have a million impressions and something like 200,000 views. Um, and on my old channel, I put it up, and in the first 18 hours, I had about 100,000 impressions. And- and that's got nine hund- that's got three times the subscriber base as my new channel, and yet it'll get something like, you know, a tenth of the views. And it's crazy, 'cause I'm- I'm- my content isn't, I don't think, markedly different. My audience still seems to be there. So it seems very much that the channel itself has been throttled in some way. So I guess I just have to leave it, you know?

    22. CW

      I love the idea of a quarantine channel.

    23. CA

      Yeah, well, it happened to Tommy Robinson as well. And it's- it's happened to a few. Um, but these days, they're just outright taking them down. Uh, there- there have been, um, people who, uh- (coughs) excuse me, um, people who are more- much more extreme than me, who, uh, have been slowly the- the noose has been tightening, and now we've come to conservative channels because all of the alt-right or anything like that, they're all gone now. Uh, they're all on different platforms. So the noose is just growing tighter, and, uh, you can see that people get targeted before they get removed as well. Like Katie Hopkins and Milo had their blue check marks removed from their- verification check marks on Twitter removed, which is weird because it just kind of shows that it's not about verification. It's about privilege, then, isn't it? I mean, Milo and Katie didn't stop being Milo and Katie.

    24. CW

      (laughs)

    25. CA

      And no one thought that they did. You know, and since they- they were public figures of note, you would think that it would be important for the public to easily identify them, but apparently not. That's-

    26. CW

      It was a warning shot across the bow, then?

    27. CA

      Yeah, I think, uh, yeah, it is. And I th- I think, I mean, Facebook actually has an active list of, uh- I can't remember exactly what they call the list, but essentially it just translates to wrong thinkers. Uh, I'm actually on it, and a lot of other people were on it who have been removed. I don't know how I still have a Facebook presence. But I mean, I don't say anything that's- that's wrong, you know, or crazy or even bigoted or anything like that, you know. I don't even make jokes anymore, um, because you can't have any fun on the internet anymore apparently.

    28. CW

      But increasingly, I've noticed that your stuff appears to be more and more you kind of treading... It sounds a little bit sometimes like you are treading on ice.

    29. CA

      Well, we are. There's very much a Sword of Damocles hanging above our heads, and it's fallen a few times and cut me already. So, uh... (laughs)

    30. CW

      (laughs) You've got the scars to prove it, yeah.

  2. 15:00 – 30:00

    Even if it's not…

    1. CW

      Even if it's not necessarily white. It's, there's a number-

    2. CA

      Yeah.

    3. CW

      ... of black people that can be on that other side of the fence, it's if you don't agree with a particular ideology. So-

    4. CA

      Yeah.

    5. CW

      ... how, how has this year fitted together? How do you think that coronavirus contributed to this, or Trump being impeached, or the impending general election, the, uh, American presidential election? Have you got some sort of conception of how that fits together? Does it even all fit together?

    6. CA

      Well, I think the, the coronavirus, um, I, I don't know. You get people saying, "Oh, this probably accelerated things." Well, maybe. I, I, I, you know, I honestly, I don't think anyone can really be sure of that. So I'm not gonna suggest that's an, uh, causal factor, especially as I don't think it needs to have been in play to be a causal factor. Um, it could just be that it set the stage, but I th- but the tinder... You know, you know, like but the tinder was already there, you know, it was already ready for the match to be flicked into it. Maybe it just packed it in more tightly so the explosion was bigger or something. But like the... What, what we've been seeing is the results of a consistent pattern of activism from a consistent set of beliefs that have recognizable public figures that are, as adherents and thought leaders. Uh, Robin DiAngelo is the person who's like trending in these spheres at the moment. Her book, White Fragility, was a number one. So it's... And it's worth reading, because it's unapologetic. I mean, I made, I was reading it earlier, I made some notes. Hang on, let me just read you a quick line or something from it, because it's just crazy. Um, the, the (laughs) the, the whole point, um, is she thinks she's saying to white people what people of color can't tell us, and she views white culture as being like... And she just says white because it's in the American context, but she's talking about the sort of Anglo-Saxon, Protestant European culture that America was founded on because it was the English colonies. Um, she views that as a kind of ethnic attack on non-white people. That's what whiteness is and that's what white supremacy is. The-

    7. CW

      Just by existing?

    8. CA

      Ju- not, not just by existing. Uh, but yes, it is just by existing. But the, it's in the way that it is different to these other cultures. It's, uh, individualistic and meritocratic, for example. These are the two big pillars that she uses about whiteness. Um, which, yeah, it would be. You would expect that. It's, it comes from England, which was an individualistic society, and it's meritocratic because it's a Protestant society. It's very geared around personal hard work. Uh, there's, there's been a, like, a, a moral tradition in England, you know. You, you, and it infects every part of the culture. So like, you know, when you're poor, you are ashamed of being poor because the implication in the English moral system is that you've been lazy, right? Is that you are a free man, you know. The, this is, this was the point of being a free man, is that you had control of your life. And if you're poor, that means you're not working very hard, right? That's... I'm not saying it's the case, it's just the moral implication of the thing. Um, and so that's why there's shame attached to being poor in, in English cultures. Um, but the, the whole structure, the, uh, the individualistic meritocratic, that is a form of racism in and of itself. That's the racist thing, and that's what white Europeans do in America, and therefore-... whiteness, which is the desire for an individualistic meritocratic culture, needs to be destroyed. And what she's doing is trying to create a kind of white identity that is effectively laden with the presumably Catholic guilt that Ms. DiAngelo has, held over from her, uh, her parents, and load this identity onto people saying, "Look, whiteness is a form of oppression. It is inherently racist. You need to, you know, understand that you're someone who perpetuates it by having standards, by wanting to be treated like an individual." To be, you know, to be concerned about merit, to be concerned about skill, in the things that are going on, rather than arbitrary and i- and expressly identity politics categories. She- she's just open in saying, "No, I'm arguing from identity politics for white people." So in many ways she's actually very similar to Richard Spencer, 'cause that was exactly his message.

    9. CW

      (exhales) I- I-

    10. CA

      Do you want to become a Nazi? That's your option. DiAngelo is offering it, and I'm saying no to that. (laughs)

    11. CW

      (laughs)

    12. CA

      No. No way. I'm not becoming a white identitarian, even if it comes laden with guilt and I have to prostrate myself. I mean, this is why, this is why you're seeing, you know, um, the CEO of Chick-fil-A shining a Black guy's shoes on stage. So, oh yeah, brilliant, shoe shining, forced racial shoe shining. That's the path to racial harmony, isn't it? You know, I mean that's the... surely the thing you're saying that was done wrong in the past? And yet they're like, "Oh yeah, I'm gonna sh-" No, we're not shining each other's shoes, okay? We're not doing that. That's totally disrespectful, which is what you were objecting to, (laughs) you know? And so we're not gonna do it and somehow make recomp- recompense or reparations out of this.

    13. CW

      So th-

    14. CA

      Like, this... humiliating.

    15. CW

      The thing which has sort of struck me the most has been how performative some of the communication has been-

    16. CA

      Yes.

    17. CW

      ... from everybody.

    18. CA

      Yes.

    19. CW

      And that, that no matter what your goal is, no matter what your viewpoint is, communication should be honest, not performative.

    20. CA

      Yes.

    21. CW

      Because as soon as you start to do that, you can't tell who the, the, where the truth's coming from, who actually cares, who doesn't care. And all the things that we need to talk about most are precisely the things that we can't talk about.

    22. CA

      Mm-hmm.

    23. CW

      And until we are allowed to have a nuanced conversation, the- w- w- how do you even move forward?

    24. CA

      I, I think y- you make a really interesting point about performative, uh, conversations. And I, I totally agree with you. I think a lot of them, especially from the corporations, uh, for example, Discord today published a thing saying, "Oh, we're gonna do our part against the fight against whiteness. Um, and we're gonna start policing your chats and stuff. So if there's anything we consider to be problematic, we're coming after it, we're gonna get it." Um, and that's really interesting, isn't it? 'Cause it, uh, like, what does that do? You know, that doesn't make less racist. It does seem entirely performative. And like you're saying, it, it, it f- it feels hollow because communication is usually not done, uh, (laughs) essentially from compulsion, you know? Like, it, it seems that these people are not speaking from a real and true conviction. It seems that they're watching everyone else thinking, "Jesus Christ, we better do something or we're gonna get fucking pow." Uh, "So here we go." And so y- you've got... 'cause communication, when a, when two people are talking, there's loads of different factors that go into the tone and the, the, the message. You've got the sense, you've got the tone, you've got the actual words spoken, the logical structure, the semantic construction of the sentence. There's a lot that goes into us communicating. And yet when these people come out and give their kind of, "Oh, we, we are for diversity. Diversity is our strength." It sounds very hollow and very forced. There's, you know, there's, there's no human connection to it. That's why it feels like corporate speak, what you're hearing.

    25. CW

      Well, so much of it's like hostage, gun-to-the-head stuff.

    26. CA

      Yeah. (laughs)

    27. CW

      Which, to me, like... I don't know. If I was... I was gonna say, if I was the head of Black Lives Matter, but th- they don't, th- there isn't a, there isn't a single figurehead. There is, they're so distributed that you can't, you can't deal with someone, which I, I'd love to get your thoughts on-

    28. CA

      Yeah.

    29. CW

      ... in a second. But like, if I was someone who genuinely cared about Black Lives Matter, and I got a guy who works for me who's actually a really cool guy from Canada who said, "I don't like the way that stuff's being done over here. I, I've proposed to my university that I'm going to kind of take on, uh, try and move this movement forward." And I was like, "Man," like, you know, "good look to you. It's gonna be a-"

    30. CA

      Yeah.

  3. 30:00 – 45:00

    I mean, Bo' Selecta…

    1. CA

      um. But yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't Germans that got it pulled down, but it was g- it was people who were un- aware that the mob on Twitter has certain trigger points and one of those is the N-word. The other one is blackface, you know. The, uh ... So a bunch of things were taken down that had people doing blackface. And again, the joke is not at the expense of Black people, it's the expense of the character doing the blackface. But it doesn't matter. The context is all gone now. None of that matters.

    2. CW

      I mean, Bo' Selecta was shite when it came out.

    3. CA

      Yes. (laughs)

    4. CW

      Like that should have been taken down for just being shit. Like forget-

    5. CA

      Yes.

    6. CW

      ... forget the implications of social justice.

    7. CA

      But that's whiteness. That's white meritocratic view, isn't it?

    8. CW

      Well, Avid Maron was just wank.

    9. CA

      (laughs)

    10. CW

      Like regardless, regardless of that.

    11. CA

      Yeah, he was.

    12. CW

      I never liked that. And man, like how dare you, how dare you make your career off the back of Craig David who it must've murder- And I know for a fact that he's had a conversation with Lee-... what's he called? The fella that- Avid Marion guy, the guy that's like three layers behind the person that was-

    13. CA

      Yeah. Yeah.

    14. CW

      ... Craig David, that guy. Um, and, uh, then Craig had this amazing resurgence of a career, like, what, for sort of four or five years ago, something like that. Did that song and then Justin Bieber remix and blah, blah. And now he's selling out at Beta, doing all this stuff. But his career, make no mistake about it, his career stopped because of that character.

    15. CA

      Yeah.

    16. CW

      That's why his career tanked. Like, uh, eh, forget the social justice side of stuff, that's one man bearing the brunt. Uh, the- he's the tip of a very, very, very long spear, right?

    17. CA

      Mm-hmm.

    18. CW

      And he's bearing the brunt of all of that. Like, that is fucking disgusting. That's the thing that's terrible about it. Like, think about all the jokes that Craig David's had to go through, how this flourishing career, this young, uh, mixed race, uh, R&B artist, fantastic good-looking guy, really good voice, blah, blah, blah. And then just some fella decides-

    19. CA

      Mm-hmm.

    20. CW

      ... again, regardless of race, could have been a Black guy, could have been a white guy-

    21. CA

      Yeah.

    22. CW

      ... could have been an Asian guy, decides to do that. Like, that's absolutely scandalous. But that was allowed on TV at the time. How do you get something passed that is targeting one person?

    23. CA

      Well, that, that was why John Barnes said he saw no problem with it at all, it's making fun of a particular person. He wasn't making fun of a race or anything. But, uh, a- again now, with, with this new framework of the idea of whiteness, uh, there's no such thing. Like, everything that we do is inherently racial, uh, to these people. So, uh, y- none of, none of that sort of stuff is gonna be made anymore, you know?

    24. CW

      So-

    25. CA

      This, this is over now. (laughs)

    26. CW

      Y- is this just the new world? 'Cause I- being honest, like, I, again, I don't want... My empathy's sort of fairly crippling and I don't want something to be on TV that makes a group of people feel uncomfortable. Like, if, if it was, uh, if that was the sort of thing that really does make a, a big swath of the population feel uncomfortable, then I- eh- like, have it for the people that should have it on DVD or whatever.

    27. CA

      Sure.

    28. CW

      You know, the same way as sacrilegious books or whatever back in the day.

    29. CA

      Yeah, yeah.

    30. CW

      Don't burn the books, but also-

  4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

    Mm-hmm. …

    1. CA

      you know? He's not gonna increase drug and crime rates, you know, things like... Like, Trump has got so many failures. But being in favor of the concept of the system is not one of them, you know? That he's, he's at least on that. Whereas the left hate the system, they hate what it is, how it's founded, in their view. And so, they, they're going to do so much more damage than Trump would ever even conceive of doing. Trump, like, again, like, Trump actually seems to care about fairness, as stupid as that sounds. Uh, when Charlottesville happened and he was like, "Look, I'm not talking about the Nazis," even though CNN always cut that bit out, uh, but, "On both sides of the argument, there are good people." That's a fairness issue. You know, if he, if he wanted, he could have said, "Yeah, the, the Proud o- uh, sorry, not the Proud Boys, the, um, the Nazis at Charlottesville, you know, the, the protesters did nothing wrong. Antifa did something wrong." If he wanted. It would look terrible. You know, a fair-minded person would be like, "Hang on a second."

    2. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    3. CA

      "You know, they're both bad at this." (laughs) You know, and that, you know, it- it's not just one or the other. And so when they, when the media, when CNN, when the Democrats say all evil lies in the opposition, you know that they're not playing for, in, in the i- ideal of establishing a fair, uh, playing field or, or how do I say? Not, not just playing field, but just atmosphere.

    4. CW

      But

    5. NA

      It's-

    6. CA

      ... a society that's fair.

    7. CW

      Given the fact that we have this crazy COVID situation that's just happened-

    8. CA

      Mm-hmm.

    9. CW

      ... everyone's got heightened emotions, heightened intensity-

    10. CA

      Yes.

    11. CW

      ... their time on site has been increased, they haven't got to see the people that they love, they're scared about catching a pathogen, which is like evolutionary wired into us to be something to be afraid of-

    12. CA

      Sure.

    13. CW

      ... so you've got this, uh, ambient anxiety, right? This low-level ambient anxiety that just sits in the background.

    14. CA

      Mm-hmm.

    15. CW

      Then, on top of that, you have this constant news cycle, which this year has just been...

    16. CA

      (laughs)

    17. CW

      Trump got impeached this year-

    18. CA

      Yeah.

    19. CW

      ... this year, which feels like-

    20. CA

      And no one cares (laughs) .

    21. CW

      ... which feels like 80 years ago.

    22. CA

      It does, doesn't it?

    23. CW

      Y-

    24. CA

      And no one cares (laughs) .

    25. CW

      So, you've got, you've got that's happened, you've got the-

    26. CA

      Yeah.

    27. CW

      ... the news which is being, uh, either misrepresented, uh, distorted, either purposefully or just due to the fact that they've got to try and keep up, which means that there's going to be, uh, willful and just accidental negligence going on. Uh, then all of the George Floyd situation, you've got the subsuic- uh, subsequent riots, you've got... And then you've got the upcoming presidential election.

    28. CA

      Mm-hmm.

    29. CW

      Like, this is the time where we should be trying to be as precise as possible with the things that we say, as honest and as truthful as possible, because any slight deviation from that will be magnified. And then when-

    30. CA

      Mm-hmm.

  5. 1:00:00 – 1:12:31

    Mm. …

    1. CW

      point is, my point is that when you are, as a species, as a, as a humanity, is facing this threat, you do combine together. I know-

    2. CA

      Mm.

    3. CW

      ... what lockdown in Wuhan kind of feels like. I know what the f- y- you, a little bit different, but you get my point, like I have-

    4. CA

      Yeah.

    5. CW

      ... something, something in common with-

    6. CA

      There's a shared human experience.

    7. CW

      Absolutely. And I was like, at the beginning of this, the first thing I thought, or one of the first things I thought was, "Wow, this really could be, in a very bizarre sort of way, something that unites us, something that creates a globe which actually appreciates what we are as a species." You know? And just how tenuous our grasp on existence is. And it felt to me like, look, this is kind of getting there and then... (smacks lips)

    8. CA

      Yeah, I, I, that sounds too optimistic to me. I, I, I don't, I, I think that at worst, uh, that, sorry, the best that the coronavirus could have done is just delayed. And it probably did, you know. This, this maybe would have happened, you know, three months ago if it wasn't for the coronavirus. Um, but the, the, the, these unresolved tensions, man. I can, I...It's totally valid to feel like we're in sort of Fall of the Republic territory here, because we are. I mean, this is, uh, you know, probably something like crisis of the third century if we're comparing Western civilization to Rome. Uh, so we've pro- we've- I think we probably do have a couple hundred years left to go. Uh, but I think it's evident that whatever we've been doing to bring us to this point is leading us on a path to destruction.

    9. CW

      Something's wrong, right?

    10. CA

      And so... Yeah. Something's wrong. Something's deeply wrong. Um, this was probably, uh, built into the Enlightenment, uh, which I, I, I'm not- I don't relish to have to say, uh, because, you know, I, I, I'm a product of it and I believe in the ideals. But you have to be honest about the things that are going wrong and these people are pushing for, like, absolute freedom and they seem to be wanting to destroy everything that we have. It took a long time to get to this position. There's very- a lot of hard work from a lot of good people. And I'm not prepared to call them all bad people because the moral standards have changed, you know. That's un- and it's unacceptable. It's- it- what's really insulting about that is it's essentially saying that the Roman Empire's army could never have learned to use guns, right? Because we, we don't- it- like, morality develops over time, you know. We- there, there was a time when literally no one on Earth questioned the institution of slavery. Why would you? What the hell are you talking about? You know. And then there became a time where people did start questioning it, then there came a time where it was essentially like a moral revolution where we were like, "No. There can't be any slavery." You know. Then it- and then democracy comes. "No, everyone should have the franchise. Why should these people have it?" It's like, okay, this is great. And it's the same as developing this- you know. So we're saying that, like, people back in, you know, the, the 16th Center or whatever, you know, if they had been raised now or, you know, introduced to our ideas, our concepts, they couldn't have believed that actually we should-

    11. CW

      That they were somehow-

    12. CA

      Yeah.

    13. CW

      ... i- i- innately deficient. That they had-

    14. CA

      Exactly.

    15. CW

      ... they had poorer morals in-built into them.

    16. CA

      E- exactly.

    17. CW

      Not that they were just a product of their environment.

    18. CA

      E- exactly. Which is amazing for the philosophy that views everything as a political contextual battle, you know. But yeah. Exactly. It- you know. They are the product of their time, you know. That's- what do you, what do you expect? Most people end up r- re- representing the societies in which they've been raised and their society had normalized moral standards that we think are terrible, and it's only because we've got a different society that everyone agrees, you know. And so it's- it seems to be doing them a great disservice. It's- it's awful. And I- and I mean it.

    19. CW

      It's a, it's a Jor- a Jordan Petersonism where he talks about how, um, people that believe that if they were back in Maoist China or in, uh, Stalin's Russia-

    20. CA

      Yeah.

    21. CW

      ... that they would've done it differently, that they would've behaved differently.

    22. CA

      Yeah.

    23. CW

      And it's like-

    24. CA

      Why?

    25. CW

      ... you would have to be an extraordinary human-

    26. CA

      Yeah.

    27. CW

      ... for that to be the case. And if you're a determinist then, you know ... (inhales deeply) Yeah. Yeah. Well-

    28. CA

      But yeah. Yeah.

    29. CW

      But I mean that- that-

    30. CA

      But no. But that's- that's exactly the point. It's like why, why would you think that they wouldn't react rationally to the pressures that have been put on them? Right? 'Cause they, they are. They, you know, they get, uh, it's a rational reaction in the, in the situation that they're in. It might not be a good one, but you'll, you'll- when you're in their place, you'll see why they took those decisions and depending on the kind of person you are, you might take them too, and that's then...

Episode duration: 1:12:31

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