I see this tweet from Jess Phillips.
So I open the BuzzFeed article.
Labour MP Jess Phillips has questioned whether UKIP’s star candidate Carl Benjamin — known on YouTube as Sargon of Akkad — should be allowed to run in this month’s European elections after new footage emerged in which he talks again about raping her.
UKIP leader Gerard Batten has faced repeated questions about Benjamin’s candidacy for the anti-immigration party in the South West region over a tweet to Phillips in 2016.
“I wouldn’t even rape you, @jessphillips,” the YouTuber and Gamergate leader posted in response to Phillips’ tweets about rape and death threats sent to women on the internet.
Benjamin has since been banned from Twitter.
You remember all that, no doubt. You probably remember the self-consciously mavericky Milwaukee skeptics group that imported Carl Benjamin to speak at its 2017 conference in defiance of all the many people who said “But rape jokes.”
Sargon of Akkad and Thomas Smith spoke in a session titled “A discussion of socio-politics.” The session was marketed as an interview but played out as an acrimonious debate without the benefit of a moderator. Smith appeared agitated as soon as he stepped on stage and proceeded to immediately drill Sargon on a controversial tweet he sent to a British Labour MP.
“I wouldn’t even rape you, Jess Phillips,” Sargon tweeted in 2016. Phillips has previously spoken publicly about how she was the victim of sexual assault as a young woman.
“You have signaled to the women in the movement you don’t give a shit about using rape to bully somebody,” Smith said to Sargon on stage. Sargon maintained that his tweet was not a threat and critics have misunderstood or mischaracterized his words. “The whole point was to demonstrate that I won’t do something and you say that’s a threat,” Sargon retorted. Smith called Sargon “awful.”
“I’m not touching her, Mom!” Yes, on the literal level, “I wouldn’t even rape you” is saying “I wouldn’t rape you,” but the literal level is not the only level in play in remarks like that. Another level is saying “You’re far too disgusting for me to rape you,” and another level is saying “Rape rape rape rape hahaha rape rape I understand you don’t like rape threats rape rape rape rape hahaha rape rape.” Nobody “misunderstood”; nobody “mischaracterized”; Carl Benjamin was taunting, insulting, threatening, and bullying Jess Phillips all in one. (How threatening? Because another level is just “Haha kidding I totally would rape you, bitch.”)
Now he’s made it explicit.
But in new footage that Benjamin posted to YouTube on April 26 — just three days before Batten’s interview — he says he might rape Phillips “with enough pressure”.
“There’s been an awful lot of talk about whether I would or wouldn’t rape Jess Phillips,” Benjamin says to camera. “I’ve been in a lot of trouble for my hardline stance of not even raping her.
“I suppose with enough pressure I might cave.
“But let’s be honest nobody’s got that much beer.”
Gedditt? She’s still too disgusting to rape…but he totally might to it anyway. Either way, the important thing is – rape rape rape rape rape rape rape rape rape rape rape rape.
