The Politics of Pretending to Stand For Something.

I never feel I have to clarify when I'm
reading something that's written down as opposed to when I'm speaking in my own voice I think it's clear enough to you guys there's some subtle change in the assonance and consonance of my words I'm gonna read you a statement right now that I've got screenshot it here and for those of you who are over 25 ask yourself when in my life did this type of political discourse become normal quote today I stand with women and people of all bodies races sexualities ages abilities nationalities religions and species I stand with people of all species okay okay I hear you I quote I stand with women who make their voices heard and also women who have yet to find their voice I stand with the women of today past and future generations I stand with the women who were exploited by capitalism greed and those who try to control the context for this is of course Instagram and it's a yeah it's a picture of a good-looking young woman on Instagram this is in effect this is the ideological decoration next to a flattering picture of oneself posted on Instagram this goes on this goes on for a few paragraphs and the crucial verb here is stand with stand up for stand I just asked you when did this become you know mainstream even the dominant mode of political discourse where you talk about standing up and standing with and standing for someone or some thing when you are sitting on your ass doing thing now the person who wrote this I actually do have some respect for I have some respect for her political activism going back about five years she used to be a really important vegan activist she's someone I still have some some respect for but you know at any age young or old people can start to slip from the world of nonfiction into the world of fiction and the internet seems to prompt you just by presenting you with a chalkboard to fill up with a blank canvas it seems to prompt you to give a justification of yourself to even just think about the format of Instagram if you created a new Instagram account what is it it's a blank slate for you to declare who you are and people seem to be drawn in step by step to making this kind of declaration now I think real political activity real political activism real political organization real humanitarian work so I'm saying activity I want to include that I think it's humbling when I lived in Laos Laos is a poverty-stricken war-torn country in Southeast Asia it's currently a communist dictatorship the United States of America dropped more bombs on Laos and they dropped on Germany in World War two country facing tremendous challenges still today when I was there medical doctors were getting paid fifteen US dollars a month forty five US dollars a month that kind of pay range and then white people would show up and complain that the doctors were corrupt and taking bribes their salary was not enough to pay for bus fare it was ridiculous that has changed a little bit by the way I've done some reading about the the changing political and economic conditions just lately in Laos um when I lived in Laos never once did I make did I make a statement like this that I've just caught you never once did I say I stand with the lotion people or I stand for the lotion people and sometimes lotion people said very flattering and strange things about me I've told Melissa anecdotes about the few times and people said to me positively they said that I was WOW they referred to me as being Lau and me as being a white Wow and so on a white lotion you know whatever that means I'm not gonna roll my eyes there but you know it meant something to them and I had to stand there and think whoa what does that mean to me cuz I'm not really on your side guys I'm an outside observer but I'm coming to this humanitarian work in this research and trying to make the world a better place with a totally foreign agenda you have every reason to be suspicious of me as an outsider and what I want for your country in its future you can decide if my ideas are good or bad but you know I mean even my values about ecology for example it's not their values they don't feel that way about cutting down the forest they don't feel that way about killing every fish in the river they don't feel that way about hunting down and killing the last Tigers in the jungle so that's my agenda I came here and I care about the elephant's and the Tigers and ecology and you guys don't so that's my foreign value of imposing even what I have to say about Buddhism I'm there studying the manuscripts in the library nobody else is and local people aren't studying those manuscripts of those history so you know there's a there's a radical disconnect and look if I had met someone even someone who was actually in Laos doing that kind of humanitarian work if they'd spoken with this kind of rhetoric I would have regarded them as insane and I probably would have responded in a kind of compassionate way of trying to talk it through with them and say well look you know keep this in perspective you know a large part of what she says that she says some stuff about indigenous people and other species but a large part of is about women women's rights women being sexually exploited so you guys know I did a lot of research about slavery contemporary slavery sex slavery trafficking in human lives for sexual exploitation also slavery for factories and things like that to various forms of slavery that exist today in Cambodia Laos Thailand Vietnam in that in that area the potential the scope for humanitarian work is very very limited and I can remember trying to give people the talk who were kind of new in the game and I was like look you know this stuff isn't hard to find like it's not hard to find the brothels it's not hard to find the pimps it's not hard to find underage prostitutes it's not hard to find you legal forms of prostitution and contrast illegal and it's not even hard to find you know captive prostitution of the various kinds that exist but you got to ask yourself are you Batman and I was not joking I had that conversation and you can imagine they're shocked but I said you know like let's let's move past this kind of this kind of verbiage I stand for I stand with exploited women or are you actually gonna show up and and solve the problem with your fists you're gonna you're gonna punch somebody out you know what you're gonna you know you're gonna burn down the brothel you're gonna kill the pimp and you know if you do if you do this kind of thing let's say you go push me you know this is human nature nine times out of ten if you punch out the pimp the prostitute is gonna run over and weep and say why did you why do you probably she's gonna be helping him she's probably gonna be attacking you she's probably gonna feel that the person who exploits her is also the person who defends her and provides for her she probably has some kind of relationship with those people even though it is partly a relationship of of exploitation this could be very very complex situations to wait into an anecdote have already told here so I'll say it very briefly I was once in the room when the directors of a Christian charity were talking about their efforts to be Batman by rescuing children who had been sold by their parents so most of those arrangements were not sex slavery I would guess based on the description maybe some of the more but you know soon as they'd sell their children to kind of work in factories and this kind of thing but sure sex slavery is very much on the on the table so this is Cambodia specifically now sure of the whole region and this Christian charity director said well when we first got here we thought we would just buy these children back like they've been sold into slavery and they've come in and raised the money and buy them back and give them back to their parents and when we did that the parents sold the children again you know this isn't a problem Batman could solve even if you think you are Batman so it's not just the problem of wake up and admit that you're not Batman now my parents were left-wing extremists they were not to even call them communists is too vague they were not moderate confidence not representative of means Jew come they were extremists even within communist discourse so to be fair someone like Noam Chomsky he called himself an anarchist he really represents more mainstream communism frankly he wouldn't be he wouldn't be happy to hear me say that was the truth no Noam Chomsky supported the Khmer Rouge supported Pol Pot in Cambodia toggle it's standing for and standing with someone you stood for Pol Pot junkie and I already did video starting with that um you know communism left-wing extremism I would even say forms of socialism a lot of they do perpetuate the idea that you can solve problems with your fists they perpetuate the idea that the way to end poverty is violence against the rich for example and it doesn't just end there that all you need is violence against the factory owners to set the factory workers free and so on and so forth through every every part of society and to be fair the unique historical experience the United States of America obviously we talk about african-american slaves a little bit of truth to that there's a little bit of truth that all you needed to liberate the slaves was to Massacre the slave owners it's not what happened in the United States America but you can have some situations of exploitation that are so extreme that sure you know you can talk about the role of violence in an ex slavery United States fought a civil war and as you guys know the Civil War was not enough it was not sufficient but what I see now on the Internet again and again sometimes from people I have some respect for some time sure you have seen this also dear viewer on Instagram may be here on YouTube is really this strange echo of the idea that you can grandstand that you can present yourself as someone greater than you are by participating in a kind of abstract and hallowed threat of violence that's what this is to me saying you stand up for and you stand with these oppressed people I think what what you're really trying to tell me is you you'd kill somebody if you could that's really what I get from this is that you want to participate in the myth of a revolution a rebellion of violence solving this problem that you want to stand with the oppressed when they in the imaginary communist revolution or whatever it is whether you've thought about that clearly when the oppressed stand up against the oppressors you want to be on the side that's winning and it's sad and it's sick because the internet keeps you trapped in this self-serving ego trap instead of having what I think of as the humbling experience that I had not just in Cambodia not just in Laos but even when I got involved with local politics very humbling at Toronto City Hall