Stats are in - #1 trending live stream yesterday with, at one point, 12,000 people watching live. Most hilarious clip so far is at 1:16:00 (hot-linked for your convenience if you don't want to watch the whole thing) - LOL what an ass clown.
Intros run until 17 min, and then the debate which runs I think about 3 hours before Sargon leaves. I'm posting this here because it is rare and weird. Haven't watched the whole thing, but my gist of it is that Sargon and Styx spend a few hours beating the shit out of Richard Spencer. You may have an instinct to one-star this because Richard Spencer and co are so foolish and infuriating - I found myself within the first 6 minutes having a very real urge to punch Spencer in the face. I would not indulge that urge because I believe everyone's physical rights should be protected regarding speech, but it's undeniably there. I'm eager to see how Sargon breaks him down.
Sargon's after-action report below.
Comments
(Old Spike)
(Short Spike)
That was just poorly moderated, and the three were pretty dickish to each other. Other than people getting exasperated by how stupid they thought everyone else was I didn't really hear a beat down. Two guys arguing for an ethno state and that inherited power/wealth is natural, perhaps even desirable as some people are 'naturally kingly', Sargon, while not denying hierarchy is a thing, posits that inherited privelage is a result of law, laws which can be changed with the power of persuasion, education and political will. I've never heard of Styx; Perhaps with a better moderator he could have challenged Sargon. The Spencer guy put forward some really weak arguments. Presumably he has some sort of mandate and seesk some kind of change in the world, but the heart of his argument against someone elses idea of change is 'things can't be that way because they aren't that way now dummy.' You can argue the merits of the status quo, but to say it is immutable is just so demonstrably false.
(Old Spike)
You must have watched this earlier since I just put it up about an hour ago. Almost every word you wrote misrepresents what was said and each person's position, which is hilariously impressive. There was only one person arguing for an ethno-state in the part of the debate that really maters - Spencer. Styx and Sargon are explaining to him why he's a fool from different angles, and the other two guys are the moderators. Styx and Sargon agree on most things and were having fun mocking Spencer - did you miss that in the discussion?
Some other guy comes in later to support Richard and is even more intellectually weak, and Sargon hardly needs to stick around to beat him up too. I've skipped ahead but I'm only 1 hour into the discussion proper and it's a total slaughter of Richard Spencer - in fact I can't believe he really believes in what he's saying. He has no arguments - he just keeps circling the same rhetoric without an argument. He's obviously some kind of typical troll to which the media has given a platform. Spencer is like a Marxist professor's deepest wish come true - he says all the right things to reinforce a race-based and group-identity-based reality of the world. It's like he knows he's playing to them.
(Short Spike)
I may not be matching the names to the right faces. I think Sargon is the british guy, Spencer the white nationalist, and Styx is the guy in the dark who asks 'Is Uma Thurman white?'. That was my understanding. Also, I only watched 20 minutes, the debate was just going to crap with insults so I skipped ahead and it seemed like Sargon was gone. Also, when I posted the video was just over 2 hours, but now its over 4 yours long, which is weird.
edit. Got Styx wrong. I'm listening to him clarify Sargons position that for pragmatic reasons an ethno state in the us is not feasible.
(Old Spike)
Sargon debates for 3 hours 30 minutes, Styx for 2 hours 30 minutes.
(Short Spike)
I give it two stars and yes it was the poor moderation so I disagree with you that it was moderated well. Speciffically (bearing in mind I didn't watch 4 hours of it, I watched two separate half hour segments) there were numerous times where one party was asking for speciffics, the other saying the speciffics were not important. Both sides were on both sides of this. Is Uma Thurman white? How do you define whiteness? What about the Irish in the 1790's. A moderator has to address this impasse. Sometimes being overly demanding on speciffics is a shady debate tactic, just as being overly general can be. Oh, so you haven't thought out every conceivable outcome in creating an Ethno State? Aha, I got you! Oh, you don't have a foolproof plan to fix every problem tomorrow? Aha, I got you! The speakers were often gunning for an 'a ha I got chu!' sound byte that was trivial or they were unwilling to concede an obvious truth because they didn't want to corner themselves. A moderator has to be all over that shit.
What this debate so very sorely needed was a steelman phase, where in their own words each speaker puts forward what they believe the others position is, to a standard the other is satisfied with. I just couldn't keep track of how fast the goal posts were moving, possibly because the debate was too unstructured. If I was moderating I'd have a schedule. Were talking about this first, this second and concluding with this. When a speaker expands too far outside of those margins assure them they'll have a chance to go into that in a following segment. This was like a boxing match with no ropes to concentrate the action, too much room for evasion. And because it was so conversational and full of interuptions and hostility. No one could really scratch the surface of their beliefs, they didn't have enough time to spin enough rope to hang themselves with so to speak. If you're debating something complex and outrageous, then give a guy time to put his case forward, especially if it's absurd. That's when you shut up and marshall your thoughts, don't just cut him off because an only semi clever rebuttal popped into your head that second. I guess I didn't really think much of the speakers either, but I'd be willing to give them a second chance with a different format. It's just not the type of topic that you can discuss in a free for all unless you're just chatting and having a laugh. Too complex.
(Old Spike)
I'm 90 min in and it's just been Spencer given long, long leeway to say incredibly stupid things while Sargon and Styx laugh and meticulously point out how and why what he's saying is so stupid. So far during the 90 minutes the scope and context has remained on track - the value and implementation of Richard's ethno-state versus what we have now, degraded (as Styx argues) though it may be.
(Old Spike)
I know it's pretty trendy to bag on Richard Spencer so I'll say first that he is pretty well studied in certain areas but MAN... he talks some shit. He has his head stuck right up is arse, as badly as any far left professor.
(Old Spike)
Yes and this is related to the horseshoe Theory which I've been pointing out for some time. These people are so far left or so far right that they wind up at essentially the same place together, which is a place of stupid. Even with the thousands indoctrinated into Marxism added to the few White nationalists the total number of people engaged in this is incredibly small. But it doesn't take that many people to destroy a society with this horseshit, as history has shown.
(Old Spike)
Hmm. I think a society with decent foundations can handle these guys. It's healthy for these ideas to be thrown around. If we're so gullable we fall for snake oily salesmen pitching nonsense then it was just a matter of time before we destroyed ourselves anyway don't ya think?
Edit: Actually looking at the rise of Hitler, it was the conditions of the aftermath of WWI that led to his rise.... I guess gullability isn't the only think that could allow crackpot ideology to seize power.
Also, I happen to agree with the basic premise of Spencer & David Duke in that white people from ex-colonies should look at their European heritage in a positive light and know their history.... pretending that everyone's the same and that history only goes back as far as the beginning of your own country (a few hundred years) is pretty dumb. And the white guilt stuff is crazy. White nationalism outside of Eurasia though is equally crazy. It's easy to write it off as plain hate.
(Long Spike)
Richard Spencer went in there knowing he would not be able to defend himself against Sargon. His method to beat him was to start talking as soon as Sargon opened his mouth. He kept quiet for everyone else as to validate their opinion but as soon Sargon said anything, Richard started talking over him. Sargon doesn’t like to be bullied so he did the exact same thing. As said earlier, this was really poorly moderated.
But I did get something from this. Richard Spencer is a fucking idiot and I think it’s a possibility he is homosexual. Not saying it’s a negative, I just think that there is a chance he is gay. I am also starting to get a grip on how utterly retarded alt-righters are.
(Old Spike)
One moderator, the main guy, seemed dense and the other one strained too hard to play devil's advocate. But with these personalities, and given that this was billed as a discussion and not a debate, I don't see how it could have gone differently. What became more obvious to me is that Spencer does not actually believe the things he says.
(Long Spike)
So why is he saying it?
Trolling?
I have been looking around on the web and I’m not the only one who picked up on the gay vibe.
This is an important point, because his fans are going kill him when he gets caught down the old glory hole.
I think he believes what he says but he is leaving out that he is dreaming of becoming the next Hitler or the next Stalin. His fantasy is to be a ruthless dictator.
I’m basing this on this debate alone as I haven’t watched much of his stuff before. ~~