Not the sort of endorsement most people would be proud of
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
— Sargon of Akkad (@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:
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!
I’d never even heard of Ayn Rand until Officer Barbrady on South Park read Atlas Shrugged and went on a rant about how awful the book was. I don’t think even now she’s made much of an impact in the UK, Adam Curtis did quite a comprehensive sporking of her and her philosophy in 2011’s “All Watched Over By Machineries Of Loving Grace”.
Ayn Rand, as I recall from articles I’ve read, was uncomfortable talking with academic philosophers. Y’see, they actually expected to discuss (dissect, debate) her ideas with her, instead of simply accepting her declarations as truth.
ETA: varalys, if you’re interested in a really in-depth discussion (dissection, debate) of Atlas Shrugged, I recommend Adam Lee’s series: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/series/atlas-shrugged/
Thanks Victorious Parasol, I shall check it out.
One of the clips of her discussing her philosophy on an old interview from the 60’s reminded me so much of the “Anne Elk” sketch from Monty Python that I couldn’t take her seriously at all after that.
My favourite comment on Atlas Shrugged is from an earlier attempt at fisking it that trailed off a few years back, at https://newscum.wordpress.com/2010/07/04/stupid-things-libertarians-say-part-ii-simplicity-itself/
Kind of tied up with the concept of privilege, and how some people will kick and scream and drag their heels if anybody tries to force them to admit that they’re not purely self-made men and they couldn’t have gotten where they were without the actions of everybody else keeping the wheels of society moving.
@Chiomara
Nah, she nicked a lot of her schtick from the likes of Nietzsche, mixed it in with a mirror image of Leninism, and stirred well. People reference her because as crap a writer as she was, she’s a damn sight more coherent than her inspirations. (Not any more correct, just more coherent).
Shoutout to Adam Curtis–I find his documentaries endlessly fascinating and enlightening. Machines of Loving Grace in particular, but the rest of his stuff as well; I’ve only recently started watching Pandora’s Box (I skipped ahead to part 6, about nuclear reactors, but am now going back to the first five).
The entirety of Ayn Rand’s pre-writing career was spent in Hollywood, which says a lot about how much she knew about real life. It sounds like she knew as much about farming as she did about architecture and railways…. I may have mentioned this here before, but I used to teach architecture in the US and first-year architecture students who’d read The Fountainhead were the bane of my existence.
At least Ayn Rand’s work lead to one of the greatest videogames ever, I am speaking of Bioshock of course. “Would you kindly?”
Oh, hell no.
The NC school board is going to allow cis girls to assualt trans girls with pepper spray in the bathroom if the bathroom bill gets struck down by the courts.
http://gawker.com/n-c-school-board-member-kids-should-be-allowed-to-car-1776025848
What the fucking fuck!?
That’s genuinely disgusting. 🙁
@wwth
That’s so gross and wrong. Fucking hell.
—
In semi-related news, I read today that the newspaper Metro had asked every party in the Swedish parliament about their stance on introducing a “third gender” in a legal sense. Out of the 8 parties, only the two most left leaning ones said they’d support the idea. A few were actively opposed, including the racist party, which only cares about LGBT issues when it can be used as a weapon against refugees, and the Christian Democrats. The remaining parties said they weren’t entirely sure, mostly because we’d have to change the social security number system. -_-
@Jenora Feuer Thanks for linking to that blog – i’m reading the rest of the “Stupid Things Libertarians Say” series and loving every line ^3^
The ruling is just for one county and it allows students to carry pepper spray on campus. One board member is pushing the bogus ‘defense’ angle which is stupid but the entire ruling is pretty asinine. Pepper spray is not a ‘defensive weapon.’ There’s no such thing, really. The county lawyer even brought up the threat of students using it on teachers. Seriously, every so often there’s usually a news report of a student getting sent home for a butter knife or nail clippers but they can have pepper spray? Seriously wtf?
@weirdwoodtreehugger Because people don’t already have enough flimsy excuses to assault trans people. >:(
Also, using pepper spray in a closed environment, like a bathroom (which often have poor ventilation in order to not spread odors through the building)? Horrible idea. If a girl is in the bathroom, and a trans girl walks in, the cis girl with the pepper spray is likely to end up blinding herself along with her victim, because she’s creating a cloud of noxious gas between herself and the exit.
All this bathroom bill stuff makes me happy to live in a neighborhood where gender neutral bathrooms are common, and one of the more popular cafes (holds a lot of live music/poetry events) has a bathroom policy that boils down to “If you think someone is in the wrong bathroom, shut the fuck up”
@IP
First, excuse my ignorance of Swedish law and culture. That said, is the proposed 3rd gender a specific thing or more of an ‘other’ option? If passed, will the SSNs have to be changed retroactively, or will the changes only matter for subsequent IDs?
“Hey boss, I think I messed up the surgery on that last dead guy.”
“What do you mean? How so?”
“Well, you know that one song, how it goes ‘The leg bone’s connected to the head bone’?”
“What? That’s not how it goes!”
“Er, it does now.”
@pitshade
“Pepper spray is not a ‘defensive weapon.’ There’s no such thing, really.”
There’s nothing wrong with carrying pepper spray for self-defense, but this bathroom bill bs is infuriating. Why is it that the same men that would call me a “manhater” for being a feminist are the same men who insist that any person who has/had a penis* automatically tries to spy on women in the restroom?
*because trans women = men, according to these guys.
@Axecalibur
As I understand it, it would be a “neither” option. Or rather, “not male not female”, which could mean “neither” or “both” or “sometimes one sometimes the other” or whatever your gender identity happens to be.
Gender is coded into our social security numbers, which take the form of YYMMDD-XXXX, where Y = two final digits of year of birth, M = month of birth, D = date of birth, and X = personal four digit code in which the 3rd digit corresponds to your legal gender (even number = female, odd number = male). In older SSNs, the four digit code also contains information about birth place. In addition, the hyphen changes into a + sign at the time of your 100th birthday, in order to avoid confusion.
So, yeah, it would require a reworking of the system in one way or another. But, as I mentioned, we’ve made changes to this system before without going back to change older SSNs to fit with the new system. So presumably this could be done again. E.g. SSNs issued from let’s say 2018 and on simply wouldn’t contain the gender info that older SSNs do, and that’s that. No problem, as far as I can tell.
@guest –
In fairness, undergrads who’re really into The Fountainhead are the banes of many people’s existences.
🙂 but most people aren’t tasked with teaching them to be Architects. Or, more precisely, to recognise, appreciate and foster the brilliant if as-yet-untaught architectural genius that is them. I did have a great first-year curriculum, though, and was just as pleased with the people who dropped out for the right reasons as with those who stayed and succeeded.
@Inkswitch:
That was one of a number of blogs that popped up several years ago from some of the regulars of Slacktivist, each taking different books to take apart like Fred Clark was doing with Left Behind. Unfortunately, as you see, the blog in question hasn’t been updated in a few years.
@mrex
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. It ties into the idea of ‘non lethal’ weaponry requiring a lower standard of when it is justifiable, which leads to people getting tasered just to quiet them down after they’ve been effectively subdued. Saying that PS is ‘defensive’ as the board members are, is to say that it is somehow safer to have in a school environment which is pretty much garbage.
As far as HB2 goes, my guess is that they consider LGBTQIA+ people to be deviants so obviously they are doing nefarious things. I also wonder if part of this is a ploy by McCrory to make up for his moderate actions last year regarding Obergefell – he actually surprised me by supporting the enforcement of the decision rather than supporting the Kim Davis BS that others in the GOP here were pushing.
@Victorious Parasol,
Thanks for that link, I first came across Ayn Rand on WHTM and tried to find some decent videos/articles to learn a little more, but wasn’t very successful.
re: the OP – ugh. I remember the last time the MFE (March For England- think EDL but with more aaargh) came to where I live. They used to march down here annually because it’s one of the most progressive, tolerant cities in the UK. It was awful. The whole city would be hushed except for the sounds of angry shouting and marching, and there were hundreds of police on foot and on horseback trying to redirect worried members of the public to safer walking routes.
We had our own EDL as a counter-protest though – the English Disco League. “Don’t hate! Gyrate!”
@IP
Thx. That seems… way complex. In Murica it was AAA-GG-SSSS:
A=area, a few hundred geographical delineations
G=group, 1 of 99 to help organize file cabinets in the ’30s
S=serial, the next unused number 1-9999
Used to be, there were all kinds of limitations on what numbers could be used where, when, and for whom. Starting 2011, it’s all randomized, since computers can handle it now. Certain #s, like a 0 string or 666, aren’t used, but otherwise it’s just whatever. Nobody (myself included, just looked it up) even noticed. Either way, not a good excuse, Sweden
Another question, is this part of a broader push for the designation? Is the government actually seriously debating this, or did the Metro ask, just cos?
@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)
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