As it’s now certain that we’re still going to be in the EU for the European election, the various racist, anti-EU, anti-immigrant and islamophobic parties are lining up to campaign. And that includes UKIP, who, as I’ve blogged previously, have selected Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon of Akkad, to be one of their two listed candidates for the southwest. Sargon’s a right-wing internet personality with a hatred of ‘political correctness’, meaning feminism and anti-racist and gay rights activism. He styles himself a ‘centrist moderate’ and a ‘classical liberal’. The latter means that he isn’t moderate, but believes in the classical economics of the 19th century: everything should be privatised, and there should be little or nothing in the way of a welfare state. And as an anti-feminist, Sargon is notorious for a Tweet he sent to the Labour MP, Jess Philips, when she was describing the rape and death threats she’d received via twitter, which said ‘I wouldn’t even rape you’.
Sargon launched his campaign at a big UKIP conference last week or so with his fellow internet rightist, Mark Meechan, aka Count Dankula, and current Kipperfuhrer Batten. Dankula is the man, who was convicted of spreading hate by making a video showing how he had taught his girlfriend’s pug to make the Nazi salute when he shouted ‘Gas the Jews’. It was not a pretty spectacle. In fact it was, as Star Trek’s Ferengi used to say, ‘Ugly. Very ugleee!’ Although it was supposed to be a press conference, Sargon started by attacking the press, boasting that their audiences were collapsing while he had a million subscribers. When asked about his notorious rape tweet by a female reporter from Sky News, Sargon got defensive and said that it wasn’t a rape threat. Which is disingenuous, as no-one said it was. What everyone found offensive was that it was directed at a woman, who had suffered rape. Kevin Logan, discussing the tweet and Sargon’s catastrophic press meeting with Dr. Kristi Winters, argued that his tweet was threatening, in that by including the word ‘even’ Sargon was suggesting that there were people, he did consider worth raping.
And everyone has picked up on that Tweet. Sargon has been massively pilloried for it in the mainstream press, with the Scum – of all papers! – describing him as a ‘sicko’. But this hasn’t deterred Sargon and his supporters from defending it. They try to wave it all off by saying that it all happened three years ago, and so it’s no longer relevant. But it is, as unlike the other politicos, who’ve been forced to apologise for ill-judged or malign comments, they’re still defending it and haven’t changed their views. In fact, the evening before the press conference Meechan and Sargon had held an event at which they talked about themselves. And Meechan told a joke that was arguably even worse. He was talking about how he had been poor at university. The were so poor, they couldn’t afford hook-ups, and so had to resort to rape. But it was worse for the women, who were also poor and always being raped. It’s the kind of joke which would have any other political party demanding an apology or considering suspending the politico involved. Not so UKIP, apparently. Back at the press conference, Sargon said he wasn’t going to answer any more questions from them, as they were ‘dirty, dirty smearers’. Which he then contradicted by immediately asking, ‘any questions?’
Sargon is also notorious for a post he put up on his YouTube channel in which he used a range of racial slurs against Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, gays and the mentally handicapped. The anti-racist/ anti-religious extremism organisation has dug it out, and yesterday put up a piece about this wretched video, including a transcript. The post was made in November 2015, and was titled ‘Offence Is Never Given, Retard’, but has since been pulled from YouTube for violating their community guidelines. Sargon’s video was a response to another piece trying to get people to stop using racial slurs. This featured a Black man, Hispanic woman, gay man, an Asian, a Jew and a woman with Down’s Syndrome, who come forward and say, ‘It’s not acceptable to call me – ‘ and then the racial or sexual slur, ‘n***er’, ‘Sp*c’, ‘f*g’, ‘k*ke’, ‘Ch*nk’ and ‘retard’. Sargon then protests against all this, and claims it’s perfectly acceptable to call Asians ‘ch*nks’ because they are more privileged than Whites. He then ends his video with a piece of text reading
DON’T LET THESE AUTHORITARIAN BUSYBODIES CONTROL YOU.
IT’S NOT UP TO YOU TO PROTECT THE FEELINGS OF OTHERS, IT IS FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL TO DO THAT FOR THEMSELVES.
AND IT CAN BE SO LIBERATING TO BE PURILE [sic] OCCASIONALLY.
GOD FORBID THESE STODGY BASTARDS OUTLAW OFFENDING PEOPLE.
Oh yes, and just to be really offensive he puts up in front of the Black man the title of a notoriously offensive Danish movie, Gay N*ggers from Space.
The piece by Hope Not Hate also states that Benjamin’s cameraman, Michael Brooks, is another rightist, who has described himself as ’14 and 88′, a far right code mixing ‘Heil Hitler’ with the notorious ’14 words. He has contributed to various far right sites, and once posted a graph showing how the birthrate in Africa was outstripping that in Europe with the phrase, ‘Planet of the Apes is coming’. Brooks appeared alongside Sargon at another Brexit rally organised by UKIP and the Islamophobe Tommy Robinson.
And this week Sargon kicked off his campaign in his home town of Swindon. He arranged to meet his public by the fountain, before moving to the pub, which he considered to be a more comfortable environment. He showed his characteristic lack of punctuality by turning up half an hour late. No-one from the mainstream media bother to be in attendance, and even the reporter from the Swindon Advertiser packed it in and went off after a while. Which doesn’t bode well for Sargon’s media coverage. Not that he can really complain – he deliberately baited them at the UKIP press conference, expecting to be able to pick up votes online. Kevin Logan pointed out that what he doesn’t seem to understand is that of his million subscribers, many are abroad and so can’t vote for him, while those in Britain are spread all over the country, so that there may be very few of his supporters in the southwest. Which means that the number of people, who know who he is, yet alone intend to vote for him, may be very small. He did turn up in Bristol on Wednesday, where he had a small gathering, but the UKIP rally was vastly overshadowed by Change UK’s.
See Kevin Logan’s and Kristi Winter’s video discussing Sargon’s campaign at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOd0KMVJDBQ&t=7193s This is two and three-quarters of an hour long, but the last 50 minutes or so are about an incident in America where the racist YouTuber Andy Warski was threatened with violence for his stupid antics.
Also, as Zelo Street has pointed out, Aubrey Attwater, the chairman of UKIP’s Swindon branch, has also demanded Sargon’s deselection because of his rape tweet. See https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/04/carl-benjamin-forgotten-already.html
Sargon is proud of having appeared at the European parliament supporting UKIP, but this looks like it’s going to be the high point of his career. With antagonism, hostility and apathy from the press and his own local party, and more general outrage from the rest of the population at his racism, misogyny and bigotry, hopefully Sargon’s hopes to be an MEP are doomed to failure.
Tags: 'Gay N*ggers From Space', 'Planet of the Apes', Adolf Hitler, anti-racism, Asians, Aubrey Attwater, Blacks, Bristol, Carl Benjamin, Change UK, Classical Economics, Count Dankula, Down's Syndrome, Feminism, Gays, Hispanics, Hope Not Hate, Jess Philips, Jews, Kevin Logan, Kristi Winters, Mark Meechan, Michael Brooks, Privatisation, racism, Rape, Sargon of Akkad, Sky News, Star Trek, Swindon, Swindon Advertiser, UKIP, Welfare State, Youtube
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