3,166 words
Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon of Akkad, is a guy who everyone loves to hate. Or rather, everyone would hate Sargon of Akkad if they could. He’s a pompous civnat mediocrity who thinks he’s Voltaire even though he has no original ideas and loses every debate against an opponent with an IQ above room temperature. He is worthy of our hate.
And yet Sargon has this singular talent for embarrassing himself in the most hilarious ways every fifteen minutes. You just can’t hate the guy. As much as we love to tease him, we’d miss him if he weren’t around anymore.
If the movie This Is Spinal Tap were about Alt Lite YouTubers, it would feature Sargon of Akkad. Sargon of Akkad is basically Spinal Tap come to life, complete with comical British accent. For those who have not seen it (and shame on you), This Is Spinal Tap was a mockumentary about a heavy metal band whose members’ inflated egos and grandiose self-importance were starkly at odds with the band’s lowbrow creative output and dwindling popularity. Guitarist George Lynch of the band Dokken summed up the essence of Spinal Tap as “the more seriously a band takes itself, the more it starts to resemble Spinal Tap.”
And this is also the essence of Sargon of Akkad: he’s not in on the joke. He doesn’t realize when he’s made a fool of himself, and is oblivious to his own ridiculousness. He bumbles around like a civnat Inspector Clouseau. If there is a banana peel lying on the floor, you can be sure that Sargon will find a way to slip on it, crash into a waiter carrying a tray of food, and tumble head over heels down a long staircase. He’s a meme who thinks it’s a person. That’s the joke. But it’s a joke that keeps getting funnier every time you hear it.
Spinal Tap
And yet, Sargon’s obliviousness may be his one saving grace.
Had Sargon been cognizant of his humiliation at Richard Spencer’s hands in their infamous debate, had he allowed himself to be demoralized by the no-holds-barred ridicule of bants-masters like Godwinson and Mister Metokur, who have extensively and meticulously catalogued all of Sargon’s boneheaded statements and ridiculous faux pas. Had he allowed the memes to break his spirit, he might have quit. It’s what most self-respecting people of sound mind would have done after such public embarrassments. Once Mister Metokur is done with you, you might as well put a paper bag over your head and find some nice cave to live out your remaining years.
But not our Sargon.
To his credit, Sargon didn’t let the haters get him down, and rumors of his premature death proved to be greatly exaggerated. While Sargon’s message board street cred has been declining for years, his popularity among normies (many of whom don’t pay attention to backroom drama) has continued to grow, and his ventures into the irl world became more frequent. Sargon, along with Milo Yiannopolous and Tommy Robinson, participated in the May 2018 Day For Freedom rally in London. Sargon also made an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, whose audience makes Sargon’s look microscopic by comparison. Social media feuds aside, things were looking up for Sargon’s career.
In a calculated gamble, UKIP decided to make use of big-name social media personalities such as Sargon of Akkad, Count Dankula, Paul Joseph Watson, and Tommy Robinson as candidates and spokesmen. It’s not a bad idea, in theory. Most of the money needed for campaigning goes toward building a candidate’s name recognition; get some people who already have that, and you’ve got a head start. For a small third party with nothing to lose, it was definitely worth a shot. And for the social media personalities themselves, they get the legitimacy of having a major party backing them. Now they can claim to be more than just “Internet people,” and possibly use the experience and exposure as a springboard for other ventures. It’s a win-win.
Of all the UKIP YouTube people (Sargon, Dankula, Watson, and Robinson), Sargon is the one with the greatest interest to us on the Dissident Right, because unlike the others, Sargon (again, to his credit) has never been afraid of engaging with White Nationalists. We have a lot of history with Sargon.
In March 2016, Sargon, still riding high on his Gamergate glory, invited Millennial Woes onto his channel to make a case for White Nationalism. It was a big break for Woes, who still had a small audience at the time, but also for White Nationalism in general. Although today, White Nationalism is discussed everywhere and all the time, in 2016 it was still considered a major event when “the Alt Right” was mentioned in a mainstream outlet. Thus, Sargon granting one of /ourguys/ a fair hearing was quite a coup at the time.
Sargon has since been invaluable as a sparring partner for /ourguys/. He is the perfect archetype of the classical liberal conservative who we are trying to defeat and replace. If you want to know the difference between Dissident Right White Nationalism and mainstream classical liberal conservatism, watch Sargon debate any White Nationalist, and you’ll get everything you need to know. You don’t need to strawman him, because he is a strawman.
In addition to Millennial Woes, Sargon has also debated Jared Taylor, Andrew Anglin, and, most famously, Richard Spencer – all of whom drew many viewers and turned out to be fantastic infomercials for White Nationalism. Sargon has probably done more for the cause (albeit inadvertently) than most self-proclaimed “leaders” of the movement.
But now, the Dissident Right’s favorite punching bag is running for the European Parliament, and after years of throwing rotten fruit at the guy, I am now cheering him on. The media is losing their minds and are on an all-out assault. White Nationalists are rising up in defense, as if to say, “Keep your filthy hands off Sargon! He’s our punching bag!”
Sargon’s campaign started off with a bang on April 18 with a press conference in which he officially announced his candidacy. For a small party that is running a candidate for a largely symbolic institution, you would think it would be a low-key affair, but in fact the room was packed to the gills with press who were eager to poke UKIP’s new “Alt Right candidate” with a stick to see if they could get him to say or do something really clickbaity. And that he did.
Sargon was first asked about he intended to do to resolve the issue of fishing rights in a post-Brexit UK. I’m just kidding. Right off the bat, they start asking Sargon about his social media posts.
The hardest part for them must have been deciding where to begin, as there are many tasty things to choose from. Sargon has been on the Internet a long time, and even the best will slip up from time to time and say something daft. And Sargon is far from the best, and says daft things constantly. So where to begin?
They kicked it off with an oldie, but goodie. A Sargon classic. They ask Sargon about his 2016 tweet where he told female Labor MP Jess Phillips that he “wouldn’t even rape her.” Most women must be relieved to learn that Sargon has no intention of raping them, but apparently, Jess Phillips took offense. When asked to explain why he felt it was acceptable to say such a thing to a woman, Sargon replied:
Because I don’t think that women are any different to men in the way that we should treat them. Unlike the establishment, unlike our judges who literally say, “If you were a man I would send you to jail,” I think we should treat women the same as we treat men. That means if a woman is being a giant bitch and laughing at male suicide, I’m going to be a giant dick back to her. Any questions?
Nice judo move. He’s using their own PC values against them. I’m not too hot on the “I’m the real feminist here” angle, but I guess it was a smarter play than saying, “Because white sharia, bitch!”
When asked again, point blank, if it was acceptable to joke about raping women, Sargon clarified, “Yes. One hundred percent. Deal with it.”
Now, is that really the correct answer? Is it really okay to joke about raping women? Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. But what is certain is that Sargon’s answer is undoubtedly the correct one if the person asking the question is a liberal journalist.
Not everyone agrees. Coach Red Pill, one of Sargon’s Right-wing YouTube rivals, believes Sargon overreacted to the question, and thus came off as thin-skinned. But CRP proved to be an outlier. Breitbart’s James Delingpole was impressed enough to pen an article entitled “Sargon of Akkad is Just the Kind of Person We Need In Politics.”
Sargon later elaborated further on the question:
Ask yourself why you care about some guy you don’t know and what he did on Twitter. And ask yourself what else you are being distracted from when you talk about this. Because you’re being led by the nose about an issue that is three years old and makes no difference to anything.
That’s probably a smoother way to handle it than his first response.
Right-leaning independent journalist Lucy Brown then asked Sargon about the rape tweet controversy:
Lucy Brown: What do you think about this three-year-old tweet that was brought up this week and used to batter you with? What do you think about that?
The Sargonster: I wish I’d sent it yesterday.
Lucy Brown: *laughs*
The Sargonster: Never apologize. Never apologize. As soon as you apologize to them for anything . . . Because they don’t care. They don’t care about a three-year-old tweet. This is a political attack that they think will be able to stop my candidacy. And they fail to understand that that didn’t work for Donald Trump and I don’t see why that should work for me. So they may as well get over it sooner rather than later. I mean, you’re a woman. Are you horribly offended by it?
Lucy Brown: No, man. But I would appreciate if you didn’t rape me.
The Sargonster: Consider it done.
God bless Donald Trump. As disappointing as he has been for us politically, he has given Right-wing populist candidates around the world a few simple tricks to increase their chances of success exponentially. Little things like “make it about you versus the fake media, the people will always side with you,” and “never apologize to the Left, it never works and alienates your base.” These are rules of thumb simple enough that even knuckleheads like Sargon of Akkad can understand them.
Invoking Donald Trump’s name was probably a smart move, too. While we Dissident Right purist in America see Trump as a Zionist turncoat, in Europe, where they do not follow American politics so obsessively, the Donald Trump mythos, in which he is a hero of the people fighting the PC elite, still holds a lot of currency. We saw this in February, when an enormous statue of Trump as a warrior-king was paraded through the streets of the Italian seaside town of Viareggio. And last July, a pro-Trump rally was held in London which saw thousands of patriotic Britons come out in support of Trump’s visit to the UK.
If nothing else, Europe’s patriots have picked up on the fact that Trump’s name strikes fear into the hearts of their neoliberal overlords like none other. That’s true regardless of whether Trump is a Zionist turncoat.
If Trump is still useful as a rallying cry for the European populists, and invoking his name gives people a way to give the middle finger to their elites, who am I to correct their illusions? In America, we have to deal with the reality of Trump, so we can’t afford wishful thinking, but I see nothing wrong with European Rightists holding on to the old God Emperor Trump mythos if it helps them rally morale and ruffle their enemy’s feathers. They would actually be foolish not to do so.
After that initial press conference, with Sargon unscathed, the press was going to have to up their ante if they wanted to put an end to the classical liberal menace. We’re living in a post-“grab ‘em by the pussy” era, and it’s going to take more than a rape tweet to stop the Liberalist juggernaut which is Sargon of Akkad. They had to break out the big guns.
The establishment’s response came hot and heavy. Buzzfeed led the charge, unloading all the best toe-tappers from Sargon’s Greatest Hits album. Of course, there’s the legendary “white niggers” rant, a 2018 chart-topper wherein Sargon called the Alt Righters in the live chat “faggots,” adding, “You’re acting like a bunch of niggers,” and, “White people are supposed to be polite” (an incident which cost Sargon his Patreon account). Then there was the 2018 club banger where Sargon, when asked about Jews, responded that they “needed to drop the identity politics,” clarifying that “ “I’m sorry about the Holocaust, but I don’t give a shit.”.” They dug up an old YouTube video of his where he makes fun of anti-racist public service announcements and defended his right to call Asian women “chinks” on the grounds that “Asians are privileged.”
The Sargonster responded to that barrage as follows:
BREAKING NEWS: Anti-political correctness entertainer has used naughty words for fun. Subscribe to Buzzfeed for more hard-hitting and worthwhile political activism.
I expect my statement to be printed in full, have a great day.
Well done, Sargon. I give that response a 9.5 out of 10. If he had put (((Buzzfeed))) in triple parentheses, I would have given him a 10. But he didn’t do that.
Sargon told Sky News that “personally, I find racist jokes funny,” and said of the media:
I tell you what. They can go and have a cry, and when they’ve collected themselves and they’re ready to talk like an adult about the issues and not bring up things that they think might be offensive and spread them around the country to people who might be offended by them, then we can have a sensible conversation about the issues.
When asked by the Swindon Advertiser how his use of the word “chink” might affect his prospects with the Asian community, Sargon trolled:
I think it is disgraceful that the Swindon Advertiser would ignore the significant cultural distinctions between Chinese, Nepalese and other patriotic South Asian communities here in Swindon. Not only that, but to think they can’t handle banter is to infantilise them to the point where it appears that the Advertiser is carrying on the white man’s burden instead of treating these communities like full and equal citizens. I will not stand idly by while the comedy police continue to suck the joy out of public life in this country. I disavow the Swindon Advertiser.
In other words, the media is doing to Sargon of Akkad what the Alt Right did to Steven Crowder in 2016, when he called himself Alt Right: they memed him into a Nazi.
Except that the Alt Right understood that Crowder-as-Nazi was a joke. The British media is meme-ing the milquetoast Sargon into the second coming of Breton Tarrant and then getting triggered by their own meme. And you know what happened next. Having memed Sargon into a Nazi, the inevitable happened: all the Nazi trolls who were formerly Sargon’s sworn enemies rushed to the defense of the Nazi meme.
Another reason why their strategy is poor is because you don’t derail an (ostensibly) Right-wing candidate by making them look really, really Right-wing. That stuff only offends liberals who were never going to vote for him, anyway. If they wanted to hurt him, why not bring up the things he said that might alienate Right-wing voters? Maybe reveal some of his pro-trans positions, or the fact that he can’t tell what race Lawrence Fishburne is. Or maybe.
Oh, wait. What’s this? Oh, no . . . not now!
Don’t you hate it when you are running for the European Parliament and then accidentally, publicly, endorse pedophilia?
Your response to that question was probably neither a “yes” or a “no,” but rather, “I wouldn’t know. I neither approve of pedophilia, nor have I ever run for European Parliament. But if I did approve of pedophilia, and I was running for the European Parliament, I could not imagine ever being so daft as to publicly endorse pedophilia, even by accident. Not even while drunk.”
But not our Sargon . . .
In an interview with Sky News’ Kaite McCann, Sargon did exactly that. He was asked about some of his ill-advised musings on the age of consent law. Sargon said it would be wrong to prosecute a pedophile priest if the child does not feel he was hurt by the experience. When asked to clarify, Sargon tap-danced, and it did not come off well.
Sigh. You can take Sargon out of YouTube, but you can’t take YouTube out of Sargon.
For the record, I don’t think Sargon is genuinely pro-pedophilia. I think he was trying to show how edgy and libertarian he is by finding nuance where none should be looked for. This was the moment when Sargon’s “don’t apologize, don’t back down” policy collided with the stupidest thing he ever said. He tried to stand his ground, and it was not smartly played.
Twitter has responded to the Sargon surge by banning his official campaign account, as well as Tommy Robinson’s (who is running as an independent). We now have a situation where candidates are not allowed to use social media, but their critics are. Sargon and Robinson have responded by rightly accusing Twitter of election meddling.
We have given Sargon a hard time in the past, but it looks like he will be having the last laugh. Even if he loses this election, he will most likely come out of it as a household name in Britain, and possibly a folk hero to British conservatives and the Tommy Robinson crowd. Or maybe he’ll get a job at Breitbart or some mainstream outlet. Certainly, his profile will be much bigger than when all this began. And apparently, the videos on his YouTube channel are reaching viewer levels not seen since the days of Gamergate.
For the Dissident Right, Sargon’s campaign is proving to be very useful for Overton Window purposes. You’ve got this fellow – cucky though he may be by our standards – triggering liberals with un-PC tweets that include racial slurs, criticism of Jews, and other taboos. He’s not cucking and is keeping on keeping on, despite pressure from the media and his own party.
Sure, Sargon is (officially) bluepilled on everything. Hell, his campaign speaking tour is called “Carl Benjamin’s Anti-Fascist Parade,” for Pete’s sake. But as a culturally disruptive influence and liberal narrative jammer, Sargon is doing a lot of good work right now.
19 comments
I have more respect for Sargon than someone like Godwinson, who despite being competent and intelligent has decided to dedicate hundreds of hours to cataloguing and mocking pathetic people on the Internet.
I have to agree.
I like Godwinson but I’m not so sure I respect him. He’s brilliant but once you get past the shiny exterior, he is pure nihilism. He believes in nothing. He’s not FOR anything because then he would have to defend it. He exists purely to attack.
Which would be fine if his attacks served some higher purpose. Mister Metokur wants you to think he’s a nihilist (“I’m just here for the lulz”) but I think Metokur only trolls people he thinks really deserves it or people who start beef with him. There is method to Metokur’s madness.
But Godwinson is just pure nihilism. One of the most talented guys on Youtube but at some point, it’s like “Why are you here?” I think that’s part of the reason he disappears so often. Doing things JUST for the lulz is not spiritually fulfilling. He needs to pick a side and fight for something.
When he got started years ago, he used to post on British nationalist image boards, so he’s clearly not clueless.
Agree 100%. Godwinson is a younger, British version of Mister Metokur: a nihilist who lives on the deck of the Titanic, finds the most deviant people around, laughs at them and worse of all, convinces bystanders that they should laugh along too. Because to do otherwise, to actually believe in anything, to be serious, is ‘pure cringe’.
The court jester gets to needle the king in ways the noblest of courtiers can not.
Lol metokur
“I’m sorry about the Holocaust but I don’t give a shit.”
Might make a good t-shirt or bumper sticker.
Well done Travis, this is the first political article I’ve found in months that understands the sub-cultures surrounding a candidate, understands what the internet is, and then accurately represents them while also making it obvious what is opinion and what is fact.
As an American this was refreshing to read, even if I don’t agree with every point you have on Sargon, Kudos for keeping journalism alive.
Mr Carl Benjamin is a person who should never be sold short. He’s gone from a two bit skeptic with a limited shelf life on YouTube, to a man on the threshold of the European Parliament with full MSM exposure. This wasn’t a matter of lucky breaks or fate – this is a man who knew exactly what he was doing.
I’ve known people like Sargon and I can say that, contrary to stereotypes, the best grifters in the world are not Nigerians or Americans but are in fact Englishmen. With them the marks don’t even realise they’ve been conned. One wonders how many naive peoples ended up incorporated in the British Empire without ever comprehending how it happened.
It was those internet bloodsport debates that raised his profile, especially his loss to Richard Spencer. All contrived to give the opportunity to give him a healthy dose of infamy. He played all those wonderful tropes of the transforming hero: a man withdrawing to seclusion after defeat, facing the injustice of being banned from YouTube, ultimately reappearing as this New Man fighting for populist courses and sprouting edgy quotes.
He gets a lot of MSM coverage because his past battles with Spencer or Anglin are a ‘get out of jail free’ card, reassuring enough media people that he’s not really one of those ‘Nazis’ even if they might accuse him of being so. At the same, as the article says, he has former Dissident Right antagonists more or less rooting for him. He may not have planned every detail or contingency, but this is a man with a plan and he’s executing well.
Is he a true believer in his new politics and positions? Maybe. Maybe he’s a cynical opportunist who realises the ground is slowly shifting. I personally think people like him sincerely believe whatever they’re professing this week and that’s why they’re so successful.
Lmao, imagine being so salty about Sargon that you feel compelled to write up this wall of nonsense. Now I not only get to enjoy the tears from TDS, but Sargon Derangement Syndrome. Keep it coming chaps.
Did any of you idiots actually read the text? He is happy that Sargon is where he is and finds him all the more likable for it.
The TRS crowd started to warm up to Sargon as well.
And why are you using the same tired terms you throw at feminists and SJWs when addressing people to the right of you? The dissident right is rarely buthurt and holds its salt pretty well. Have you developed a conditional reflex where you blurt out the same lines regardless of situation?
Travis LeBlanc, “author” of this article, is skilled at producing fake news.
I am going to approve all comments by Sargon fanboys, for the same reason I approved chapped Chapo comments.
This is the dumbest thing I’ve read in a while. Do you PC police have anything better to do? Rape jokes are ok. Have always been ok. Sargon isn’t the only one who has said it. A lot of people are getting sick of this. And the harder you people try to censor speech and cry offense to everything you hear, the more extreme speech is going to get. So look, people have made rape jokes, black jokes, fat jokes, yo mama jokes, racist jokes, religion jokes, etc for several decades without anyone crying or being offended or being compelled to try to change laws for their personal convenience. So I’m sure this generation of snowflake faggots will survive. Stop fuckin crying. You don’t like what someone is saying, don’t listen to it. Shut your mouth, walk away, get a life.
Wow, reading comprehension is not strong with the Sargon crowd.
You can tell rape jokes, but that’s not what Sargon did, he told a not rape joke.
As an American, I find it really odd that’s so many people were upset about what Sargon said. Is this some type of British thing where you call an elevator a “lift” or potato chips “crisps”?
Can some red coat please explain to me why saying that you do not want to rape somebody is now bad?
C’mon! That was made obvious in the article itself by quoting Lucy Brown’s question. It implies he would like to rape other women.
I feel like the first couple of paragraphs is you screaming “I don’t get it!” while the rest of the article clearly shows that you do. Convincing the 0.1% of the intelligent and and open-minded population that you are correct is completely meaningless in the face of the millions of normies that vote.
Where to start? No one with a room temperature IQ can win a debate, period. I’d declare both debaters losers before either a winner in such a case. And no one with an IQ and redpilled/wokeness level in the upper 1% would even want to debate Sargon. I’m certainly not going to waste my time debating one of the good guys when there are demons to slay. True gentlemen have discussions anyway.
And why would anyone want to hate him? I HATE the people who want to silence voices like his and my own. I HATE the people who would behead me if I visited their country. Sargon is not that type of person. Half the Democrats in America are the aforementioned former, and they want to invite the latter into our country with open arms. Those are people worthy of hate.
It seems that you rightly feel that the hyper-intelligent are more deserving of the attention of the people. But in light of the lack of attention such people receive, be grateful someone like Sargon is getting as much attention as he gets.
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