Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - The People have Spoken

Episode Date: January 9, 2019

Filmmaker Astra Taylor asks "What is Democracy?" and YouTube creates the most disliked video in the history of the platform. Chapter One in the new ToE Failure miniseries.

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. This installment is called The People Have Spoken. Democracy was actually a word I didn't like very much. Because I came of age in the aughts when George Bush was bringing democracy to Iraq, it wasn't actually a word that had very positive associations. So on a gut level, I was like, ugh, like democracy. I first met filmmaker-activist Astra Taylor around 2010.

She was very involved in Occupy Wall Street, and she inspired a bunch of people, including me, to go down to Zuccotti Park and march. You know, we go down the street with this sort of classic chant,

this is what democracy looks like. And I love to march, but I've been on a lot of marches, and so sometimes that chant makes me sad, because sometimes I think, well, democracy has to look like more than this, right? This can't be the only expression. So that's sort of what set me on this quest. Astra Taylor's new film, What Is Democracy?, plays out very much like a quest.

She travels all the way to Greece, the birthplace of democracy, for answers. But in modern Greece, democracy is totally broken. The people were far more courageous than their leadership. And by a 62% vote said no to the blackmail addressed to them. In her film, Astra talks with Zoe Konstantinopoulou, former Speaker of the Greek Parliament, who reminds us that in the wake of the financial crisis, the Greek government implemented austerity measures, measures that were mandated by Greece's creditors,

the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. And so in 2015, citizens rose up in defiance and demanded a referendum on the terms of the new bailout. This was a sovereign democratic decision that nobody had the right to violate. And yet, eight days later, the country's creditors and the country's government reached a so-called agreement to implement the very measures that had been rejected by the people. What happened was a betrayal. The challenge I'm getting at is we live in a world where there are all of these supranational institutions that are effectively a sort of economic constitution for the world.

This tale about modern Greece is a stark example of the power imbalance between the people and multinational corporations and global trade organizations. This is the nightmare of our time, which is that the undemocratic forces and the anti-democratic forces are increasingly global. To make sense of this nightmare, Astra turns to the political philosopher Wendy Brown. Is it possible to think about democracy

and democratic contestation of global forces that does not match the scope and the sovereignty of those forces. And I think in the end, the only prospect for democracy is that it operate at those more local and bounded levels in order not just to contest but to dismantle the globalized ones. Wendy Brown insists that in order for small, localized democracies to be effective on the world stage, exclusions must be made. I think to have democracy, there has to be a we. You have to know who we the people are. Can't just be a kind of vague, universal thing. And I think it has to be bounded. In order to govern ourselves, we have to know who the we is who's doing the governing, and

we have to know who the ourselves are and what their bounds or limits are. For us to say we're going to engage in a democratic process, we have to decide who's in and who's out of that process. Democracy always has exclusions. They've almost always been premised on terrible forms of marking, stratifying, and naming who's human and who's not human by gender, by race, today by the question of documentation, papers and so forth. I'm not defending those, but I am defending the idea that democracy has to have bounds.

It has to have a constitutive we. It is extremely difficult for me to listen to people like Wendy Brown because I just don't see how we solve any of the problems we face. Climate change, economic inequality, rising fascism, misogyny, without first acknowledging that we are all in. But after watching Astra's film, I think, well, I'm in the minority on this. People have different opinions of immigration laws. If we don't have a border, we don't

have a nation. If we don't have strong borders and it affects our economy, Americans do suffer. Astra does a number of person-on-the-street interviews with random Americans. And most of these vox pops are pretty bleak. Do you live in a democracy?

Democracy? Does that mean that they tell you what to do. There is a lot of really dumb stuff that people are ready to say, and they'll say it really eagerly. And people will also say really racist stuff the minute you put a camera in their face. If you're a person that's lived here your whole life, and you're white, and I'm not trying to be racist because I'm not. I can't tell you how many times I had I'm not racist, but on camera.

If you are a different nationality, you're going to get help. Versus somebody who has grown up here, who's lived here, who has, you know, worked since they were 16. And your parents make above the FAFSA amount of money. $150,000. We're not going to get money. And I think that that's bullcrap. So I'm under no, you know, illusions that the people are, you know, innately good or innately craving democracy or enlightened. I mean, I think this is, you know, and the film talks about that

as a paradox. Like, how do you create a democratic people out of an undemocratic people? It's a global affair. There's something very powerful about that. Because it means in all of these arbitrary boundaries, all of these lines of demarcation, these walls that separate are shattered. And therefore, our democratic movement is one that embraces our brothers and sisters in Greece, in North Carolina, in Guatemala, in Ethiopia.

That's the philosopher Cornel West. He's adamant that if we truly want democracy, we have to think globally. Southside Chicago and indigenous peoples' reservations, all of those precious folk have exactly the same value. And that's a very different way of looking at the world. For Cornel West, democracy has to both look out for everyone and protect its people from everyone. See, I come from a people, a black people, who have suffered in forms of being terrorized, traumatized, and stigmatized in

the name of majority rule. So democracy cannot be simply majority rule. If it was majority rule, black folk could easily have remained enslaved to Jim Crow. It was not democratic processes. Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was dictatorial. It was not democratic. Brown v. Board in 1954 for school integration came from a counter-majoritarian institution called the Supreme Court. Didn't come from the majority. If the majority of Americans were to vote in 1954

for school integration, it never would pass. It seems to me that real democracy, if it's going to work, it demands a certain intellectual engagement and wrestling with ideas, deliberation. But do you think people want to rule themselves? Well, it's a tough question. Dostoevsky raised the question, is it not the case that most people fear freedom? Is it not the case that most people would rather be followers of authority rather than authorize themselves? That's what we're up against in human history. That's why democracy is always an over-against practice, an over-against phenomena.

And therefore, there's a sense in which we look foolish. Anybody who goes against the dominant tendencies of human history, which are those of hatred and revenge and domination and oppression and subordination and domination. What a fool. And you say, yes, count me in the crowd of the holy fools. I mean, you look at human history and there's so much evidence of injustice, exploitation, dehumanization, greed. And yet, you can also look at history and see all this evidence that we have expanded the circle of inclusion, right? The demos, the demos of democracy of the people has expanded. In Athens, it was male citizens. You know, women were excluded, foreigners were excluded,

slaves were excluded. Now we are at a point where the demos includes women, includes people of color. Foreigners can become citizens, even though people are trying to shut that down. So it's like, I sort of go, well, who am I as a woman in 2018 to be like, oh, it's all hopeless, right? When 100 years ago, I would have not even had a voice in the community.

In the end, ancient Greece doesn't have a lot to offer Astra. Not only were women and foreigners excluded from the demos, Plato himself, he wasn't even down with democracy. The excess of liberty, he wrote in the Republic, whether in states or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery. Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy. To be fair, Plato's more down on the inequality that democracy cultivates rather than the idea of democracy itself. And it's this inequality that takes Astra from Greece to Siena, the birthplace of capitalism. Because for Astra Taylor, capitalism is the great unequalizer. It was very obvious to me where I could represent democracy, you know, Western democracy, and I would go to Athens, Greece, right? And there's all of this.

We all know that that is this sort of symbolic stand-in for self-government. But where do you go to symbolize the beginning of capitalism? That's what Siena represents for me. The town represents the beginning of financialization, the beginning of capitalism. It's where they developed checks,

like literally because they couldn't carry so much gold because they were these merchants, much gold because they were these merchants, right? So they were like, let's develop banking. In 1287, there was a revolt in Siena. They gave power to an oligarchy of merchants and bankers. This is the room where they used to meet. And then around 1330, they commissioned the painting of this room. That's the writer and philosopher Silvia Federici. Astra brought Silvia with her to Siena to look at a painting the oligarchs had commissioned for their council hall.

I'm a huge fan of John Berger and his Ways of Seeing series, his politics of seeing and interpreting paintings. And so I think in my mind, I was like, I would love to have a painting and a film and to luxuriate in the imagery and the texture. And so I just knew that this was right. This triptych covering the walls of the council hall is called The Allegory of Good and Bad Government. It's the first secular fresco.

So it's not about Jesus and it's not about the saints. It's about government. And if it's good, life is nice. And the people dance and there's food to eat and the city is beautiful. And if the government is bad,

it's fucking mayhem, robbery, rape, torture. And the only store that's open is an arm store, like a weapon the only store that's open is an arms store. Like a weapons supply store, that's literally the painting. We have the Christian virtues flying in the sky on top of the common good. We have faith, we have hope, we have charity. One of the things that you notice is the absence of the principle of freedom. Freedom and equality are not important ideals in the Middle Ages.

It's actually the concept that women developed. Women developed this idea because it was women who were first enslaved. Men weren't enslaved at first. It didn't make economic sense. And so it was women who developed the idea of freedom. Women who had the first dreams of freedom. It makes perfect sense that Astra Taylor ends her vision quest with Silvia Federici. Because ever since the 1970s, in her writing and her activism, Silvia Federici has been illuminating the connections between gender and economic inequality. Connections that many of us still struggle to see. We don't see inside the house.

We don't see aspects of reproduction that are very central, particularly the raising of the children. Reproduction is still not yet seen as a sphere of political relations. And I think it was the great political and theoretical evolution of the women's movement in the 70s to have said, you know, the personal is political and more important, the sphere of reproduction, the sphere where everyday life is reproduced

is a political sphere. Democracy in the home, democracy in the country. So I think the scene with Sylvia and I is just trying to put women back at the heart of the democratic story because we have been so written out of it. There's been this whole idea that it's a male business, and it's not true. If we don't recognize that democracy has to operate at all levels of social life, and even in our most intimate relationships, we're never going to get there. I think that women have a particular insight into democracy.

Women have never been befriended by democratic government or the country. They've always been excluded. Ladies and gentlemen,, they're crazy. These kids are nuts, but they're not. They're fucking eee. They're just boring. This Louis C.K. December 2018 performance was surreptitiously recorded by someone in the audience. Probably not the laughing guy. You should address me. They're like

royalty. They tell you what to call them. You should address me as they them. Because I identify as gender them. Because I identify as gender neutral. Oh, okay. That's fucking great.

This recording immediately went viral. For many, it's proof that the comedian has learned nothing after being exposed last year as a lying masturbator. For others, it is proof that the man is just no masturbator. For others, it is proof that the man is just no longer funny.

For me, this clip is proof that Louis C.K. is totally serious about making a comeback. Because everybody knows the fastest way to the top is over the bodies of your vanquished politically correct enemies. We have to stop with political correctness. We have to get down to creating a country that's not going to have the kind of problems that we've had. Look, no one here is going to pretend like the president is always politically correct.

He isn't. I think that's one of the reasons the American people love him, one of the reasons that he won and is sitting in the, he isn't. I think that's one of the reasons the American people love him, one of the reasons that he won and is sitting in the Oval Office today. Donald Trump's relentless political correctness bashing took him all the way to the White House. They don't use the word Christmas because it's not politically correct.

Okay, we don't know exactly how much of a boost these anti-PC rants gave him, but I'm pretty sure they helped more than the Russians did. We're saying Merry Christmas again. As far as I can tell, political correctness is a paradoxical amalgam of postmodernism and Marxism or neo-Marxism. As far as I can tell, this anti-PC stance is also mandatory for membership in what folks now call

the intellectual dark web. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel or click here to give a quick donation. Or as others like to call it, free speech YouTube. A kind of dogma of political correctness here. We gave up our First Amendment rights a long time ago. In the name of political correctness. Political correctness has done an enormous amount of harm. The voices you're hearing are all pioneers in this new fundamentalist vanguard. You have to use this word. You can't wear that clothing.

That's cultural appropriation. I found them all on YouTube. And I have to tell you, most of these clips are from videos that are like two plus hours long. Well, political correctness is bigotry. And I found these clips from just randomly scrolling and hitting play. It took us barely an hour here at TOEHQ to build up a PC rant library of over 50 clips. This is starting to affect my clients. I've had three clients in the last two years who have been driven near the point of insanity by politically correct occurrences at work.

On YouTube, you can find thousands of videos with hundreds of thousands, millions of views, all dedicated to defending free speech from the psychotic, unhinged left. It's like the Spanish Inquisition. I'm not kidding. These YouTubers are heroically defending free speech from universities, Hollywood, the mainstream media, and the deep state. And while we've seen real action on college campuses over the past few years, teenagers trying to shut down lectures with provocative titles like 10 Things I Hate About Mexico and Transphobia is Perfectly Natural,

I have yet to come across a single pro-political correctness channel or video on YouTube. Even a simplified cursory analysis of these anti-PC videos, like the one I'm doing here, makes it clear that political correctness is a boogeyman. A boogeyman made of straw. There is obviously something else going on here with these free speech warriors. I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to because it's just so goddamn funny I can't help but say it i figured out how to monetize social justice warriors that is what it is i know it's so funny i just can't believe it that's jordan peterson he's built himself an empire fighting political correctness they came for the scandal and stayed for the content 2018 was quite a year for free speech warriors like Jordan Peterson.

And it was YouTube that made it all possible. So guys, apparently we control Rewind this year. Y'all, we can do whatever we want. What do we do? So it was kind of bizarre that YouTube's annual, year-in-review video, the YouTube Rewind, didn't include a single reference to Jordan Peterson or the intellectual dark web. There's one thing this video needs. K-pop!

YouTube Rewind 2018 now has the honor of being the most disliked video in the history of the platform. Over 15 million dislikes. Oh, God, it's so political, isn't it? It's so fucking political and so sugar-coated and so like this weird socialist utopia that YouTube's desperately trying to create. Most of the backlash came from fans angry about how out of touch the Rewind video is with the reality of YouTube. With two feminist tosspots.

And this is true. The Rewind video snubs some of YouTube's biggest stars like PewDiePie and Logan Paul. I've never seen one of these people before and yet these are supposed to be the main creators of YouTube. Where the fuck is PewDiePie? Many critics have suggested that these omissions were intentional, an attempt to appease advertisers nervous about controversy. And sure, Jordan Peterson is also no stranger to controversy.

But still, I find it so bizarre that he would be snubbed by YouTube. Because there is a specter haunting technology companies like YouTube. The specter of regulation. And all the technology companies of Silicon Valley, Google, Facebook, Amazon, all of them, they've entered into an alliance to exercise this specter. And free speech fundamentalism is of utmost importance to this alliance. When content is popular, companies like YouTube profit.

And free speech fundamentalism protects popular content, no matter how racist or misogynist or hateful the content might be. But it is imperative to understand that for technology companies like YouTube, free speech fundamentalism is by no means merely a defense of a business model. It is so much more. It is a defense against any and all regulation that would open up their algorithmic ordering of content to critical examination, oversight, and the rule of law. But this game is far from over. In fact, this is pretty much the beginning. Chapter 1. Perhaps next year, YouTube will go on the offensive.

Perhaps for the next Rewind, they'll even enlist Louis C.K. You have been listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called The People Have Spoken. This episode was written and produced by me, Benjamin Walker, and Andrew Calloway. It featured Astra Taylor and her film, What Is Democracy? Go to theoryofeverythingpodcast.com for information on how you can see it. It's actually opening up in theaters mid-January in both New York City and Toronto. The Theory of Everything is a proud founding member of Radiotopia,

home to some of the world's best podcasts. You can find them all at Radiotopia.fm.