When Antifa Attack
Ever since I'd first learned what Antifa is from watching Sargon of Akkad's channel, and ever since he'd been pushing back against them, I'd predicted a clash like this was only a matter of time.
Part of me wishes I'd written it down, as this was the exact scenario I had been picturing (this and the Ben at Berkeley analogy) when I wrote my article in defense Anita Sarkeesian and how she claimed she felt intimidated by his presence.
She being a 5'4" woman to his taller, bulkier man.
This exact scenario between Sargon and Antifa is what I imagined she felt could have happened to her, even though he knows, and I know, that he wouldn't even, ever. I've tried to explain that to Sargon, but still my words are met only by silence. If anything good comes of this attack, my hope is that part of it will include a greater degree of empathy for her own feelings, having gone through it himself, and the two of them can begin to #HealTheDivide.
So what happened, exactly?
Yesterday, on March 5, 2018, Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon of Akkad, met with the Ayn Rand Centre UK, Kings Libertarian Society, specifically to have a cordial discussion with Yaron Brooks about objectivism. The event started out rather well, everything going as expected, but after about thirteen minutes, a group of Antifa protestors raided the auditorium chanting "No fascists on campus" before a group of them rushed the stage and proceeded to start a fight:
Mind you, I have nothing wrong with peaceful protest, which is what this could have been, much like what Rees-Mogg experienced in a previous episode of This Week in Stupid. If these protestors had chosen to act peacefully, it could have ended peacefully instead of them get roughed up and thrown out and (hopefully) charged with assault.
You might think I'm poisoning the well with my framing, but the video is fairly clear. These protesters had no business being there. They weren't invited. They came of their own accord solely to start trouble for Sargon and brought their pernicious problems with them.
Just before the 13:40 mark, we can see one individual with a red hat invade Sargon's personal space, reach down, and forcefully grab at him, trying to take his microphone away. I don't know if UK law is different in this regard (I suspect not), but in the US, this would meet the legal requirements for willful assault and battery in the clearest possible way.
It's not even a question, really. A novice could win that case, it's so transparent.
A few seconds later, this same individual in the red hat shoves a man with black hair and black clothes standing in the front row. The man in black responds by grabbing the Antifa member's flag and they get into a scuffle with the man in black punching him before being joined by a fellow attendee. Meanwhile, in the background, we see a group of Antifa in black ski masks getting in Sargon's face, shoving him and another person who are just caught off guard and trying to dial back the tension.
The Antifa members are quickly routed and escorted off stage. An older gentleman in glasses and others continue to sue for peace, telling the Antifa members to "Back away," before anymore violence ensues. For completeness sake, the guy grabbing the bullhorn probably didn't need to do that. It seemed unprovoked, though by this point, the heat of passion has already set in, so that's more of a grey area compared to the red-capped individual.
I had a hard time hearing the audio over the shouting and the bullhorn. One Antifa member calls the group terrorists, or something close to that. Someone (I'm guessing Yaron Brooks) notes that "the fascists are here," referring to the Antifa members and suggests that everyone learn from the example they're providing.
I'm just gonna assume it's Yaron for simplicity.
As an aside, I love Based Sargon here just casually sipping water like this is an everyday occurrence for him. Sad to say, as he continues to gain prominence, it'll probably only become more common.
"Yeah, that's right, fuck off, ya bunch of limp-wrist pansies."
The rest of the video is mostly just Antifa dragging their heels in leaving, whining and moaning the whole way out. Oh yeah, and if you can't tell, Antifa apparently pulled the fire alarms, forcing the event-goers to evacuate, which is that noise you hear.
Anyways, Yaron (or whomever) is correct in stating that this is what fascism looks like and that it's a very instructive lesson for all who actually oppose authoritarianism and violence.
The sad irony is that these poor lost souls have become the very thing they claim they're fighting and they don't even realize it. They are completely delusional, caught up in hallucinations crafted by a combination of postmodernist doctrine and the media-political complex, to the point where they think raiding and assaulting a bunch of people just sitting around talking is stopping fascism, rather than perpetuating it.
What makes their madness particularly dangerous is that their faulty premises have compelled them to a form of violence that, at least within the twisted internal logic of their minds, is wholly justifiable. Scott Adams has noted on previous occasions regarding Trump Derangement Syndrome, that if you genuinely believe the world is full of Nazis, then that comes attacked with it a moral mandate to put a stop to them since, after all, isn't that what we would have expected people to do against the actual Nazis?
For anyone curious, this is exactly why we need guns, and I'm sure Sargon's own position on gun control has probably shifted ever so slightly as a result of this.
I would argue the main reason the Jews and others didn't stand up to the Nazis was because Hitler had first disarmed the population. Britain has very strict gun control as well and is having a hard time policing actual crimes like pedophilia, rape, and terrorism in the course of throwing people in jail for making offensive tweets.
It makes me wonder if Antifa would have even tried this had they known, or at least had reason to think, a few attendees might have been armed.
There might have been bloodshed and, as already stated, the event-goers would have been acting in self-defense since Antifa struck first, so I can't exactly say I would bemoan the loss of a few ancoms if it came to that. It's good it didn't come to that, and I'm glad Sargon and everyone else look to be ok, if not a little shaken and worse for wares.
Still, this is becoming a real persistent problem. First Ben Shapiro, now Sargon. Stefan Molyneux has received bomb threats for events. Milo and Cernovich and Coulter get threatened regularly. Regardless of whether you agree with any of these people's views or not, they clearly aren't fascists. If anything, they all tend to prefer less government involvement in people's lives, while sharing a general aversion for any sort of violence.
As Vox Day put it: SJWs always project.
It's a tactic taken straight from Saul Alinksky's Rules for Radicals that you accuse your enemy of what you yourself are doing, in this case being a violent authoritarian.
Notice how, for all the talk that conservatives and centrist libertarians are hateful, murderous sociopaths that just want children to die, it's always the leftists that tend to start violence, whether it's shit like this, Ben at Berkeley, or trying to rush Donald Trump on stage. If the center-and-right were really as violent as is claimed, I'd expect to see a lot more dead leftists, given it's the right who wields all the guns. If you had a civil war between the two sides, it wouldn't even be a contest. A handful of hardened Texans could occupy and hold all of California.
That they don't - that the center-and-right tends to act mostly in self-defense as shown here - suggests an incredible amount of restraint on their part.
The other side, not so much.
It's a sobering thought that this is just going to continue to get worse as the far-left extremists devolve further into their delusions, thus leading to the creation of far-right extremists to counterbalance them.
For those of us in the rational center, if we're in fact dealing with real fascists who only LARP as Antifa, then that gives us the moral mandate to stop them. A chilling thought. How easy it is for us to project back into the past and say we'd obviously assassinate Hitler ... until it actually comes time to do it. To do nothing is to let them win. To initiate violence against them is to let them win.
About the best we can hope for is a perpetual stalemate, forever keeping the wolves at bay, for indeed they will turn any of our tactics against us if they can, claiming the moral high-ground because we failed to achieve the perfect balance between minimal necessary force and adherence to the pragmatic law of war that demands you crush your enemies completely. I wonder just how many of us could have stomached fighting in World War II or the American Revolution, knowing that, if we were wrong, we'd be branded as fascists and traitors just like Antifa claims.
It isn't about winning the physical confrontation. We can do that easily, like I said. It's about figuring out how to win hearts and minds without succumbing to the same delusions of grandeur.
How do you fight a monster without becoming one yourself?
Jordan Peterson talks about the myth of the dragon. How the hero is the one who volunteers to do battle with the forces of evil. One possibility is that we need such a willing scapegoat to do our dirty work for us. To be a dark knight. Of course, to even suggest that is to open one's self up for attack and to be called a fascist for inciting violence as an option. Even though we didn't strike first, the enemy will still pretend we did and point fingers and use it as a rallying cry to further inure and justify their own actions, their own hatred, their own violence.
We could win that way if we ultimately had to, since we have the guns and they don't; but is that the only way or is there another?
The law demands the use of minimal necessary force as a means of keeping our hands clean.
I've long suspected that, despite my #HealTheDivide campaign, the two political factions might ultimately be irreconcilable, since they're partly based on a genetic predisposition towards certain personality types and temperaments. Short of fixing people at a DNA or cognitive level, an ideological segregation may be the only way the two sides find peace. Hence why, for years now, I've favored a sort of Balkanization between the left and the right (and maybe even break it down further than that).
Hegemonic entities like the United States and the European Union rope people into a form of forced association, wherein people who can't stand each other are at each other's throats constantly because they're being coerced into betraying their preferred principles. The original intent of the American federal system was that each State acted as its own sovereign nation and, to some extent, we still have that, but by and large it's the big overarching things that bind us and create tension.
If you had a situation where Texas and California both seceded, the former would become a walled off minarchy with armed guards stations on the parapets, while the latter could become New Venezuela La La Land and each would be happy getting exactly the system they wanted ... or at least, they'd have no right to complain, having gotten exactly what they wanted. It'd be a great way to objectively test the effectiveness of those ideologies, even though the more rational among us are already satisfied with the results of Cold War Germany.
I have great love for Sargon and wouldn't want him doing anything but what he's doing. Still, I don't want him to get hurt for it either. I wouldn't blame him if, after enough of these encounters and seeing Theresa May betray the Brexiteers that he up and decides to find refuge in America someday. I don't wish it, since Britain needs him there and leaving would only be a gain for the globalists, but I would at least understand it. (Hopefully, I don't have to say I predict it.)
So what happens now?
I'm sure Sargon will make a video about this in the coming days (edit: turns out he did) and people among the Intellectual Dark Web will be talking about it for a while. But I mean tactically, what happens now? Are we going to have to treat Sargon the way we treat Shapiro and hire half a million dollars worth of security just so he can speak in public without being assaulted? That's yet another reason why we have a right to bear arms in this country, because it's a lot cheaper to create deterrent that way, and rarely do you ever have to act on it.
I don't know what will happen, but I'm glad Sargon is ok. Hopefully, people learn from this.
Towards that end, I'm going to be doubling my Patreon donations to him, both as a symbolic show of support and as a pragmatic way to hopefully help him protect himself. I suggest anyone who cares about him consider doing the same and #StandWithSargon.
As for Antifa, I have a question for you:
But honestly, I think we all know the answer already.
