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Carl Benjamin

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This article is about the YouTube commentator. For the American abstract expressionist painter, see Karl Benjamin.
Carl Benjamin
Benjamin on Louder with Crowder, 2016
Personal information
Born (1979-09-01) 1 September 1979 (age 45)[1]
Swindon, Wiltshire, England[1]
NationalityBritish[2]
OccupationYouTuber
YouTube information
Also known asSargon of Akkad
Channel
Years active2013–present[3]
Genre(s)Politics, vlog
Subscribers790,000+[4]
Total views215,000,000+[4]
100,000 subscribersApril 2015[5]
Last updated: 1 March 2018

Carl Benjamin (born 1 September 1979), better known by his online alias Sargon of Akkad or just Sargon, is a YouTuber from the United Kingdom. Benjamin's early videos promoted the Gamergate controversy and antifeminism. Since then he has covered topics such as politics, anti-progressivism, and the alt-right.

His alias is taken from the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire, Sargon of Akkad.[6]

YouTube career

Benjamin's early videos often were concerned with Gamergate and antifeminism.[6] He has hosted live streams with guests, including internet personalities such as JonTron.[7][8] He also appeared as a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience in June 2017,[1][9] and The Rubin Report.

His channel first drew attention during the Gamergate controversy in 2014,[10] when he argued in one of his videos that members of the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) were actively plotting to influence video game development to conform to their "ideological feminist agenda".[11] He stated that the research produced by DiGRA board members was "sloppy and unprofessional and absolutely overrun by people who have an ideological agenda that they simply cannot leave out of their research".[11] An Inside Higher Ed article described these allegations as a "conspiracy theory".[11]

Several months later, in June 2015, YouTube took down one of Benjamin's videos when it received a copyright claim from The Guardian.[12] Benjamin contested the claim against the video, which used substantial portions of The Guardian's video, but was not successful. The Guardian said it was offering "advice on how to engage with Guardian content without breaching copyright". The video was restored later the same day.[12] However, one Los Angeles Times columnist called it "alarming to see copyright law used to stifle debate in the public square".[12]

In May 2016, in response to Labour Party politician Jess Phillips' statement that rape threats are commonplace for her, Benjamin said "I wouldn't even rape you" in a YouTube video and repeated this on Twitter.[2][6][8][13] Benjamin declined to apologise for the comments.[13]

In early 2017 Benjamin created a YouTube video and a Thunderclap with 13,165 supporters in defence of YouTube personality PewDiePie following a controversy about PewDiePie's use of anti-Semitic imagery.[14][15]

His videos have been credited with popularising Kekistan.[16][failed verification]

He has secondary YouTube channels such as "Ancient Recitations" which contains numerous audiobooks, including ones for the Epic of Gilgamesh,[17] the Enuma Elish,[18] an Akkadian erotic hymn,[19] an Akkadian hymn to Ishtar,[20] and other ancient historical texts from Ancient Greece and the Ancient Near East. Benjamin's other YouTube channels include "Sargon of Akkad Livestreams", "The Thinkery" and "The New Memedia" (formerly known as "Vae Victis"). "The New Memedia" was removed for copyright reasons and was replaced by "The Thinkery".[citation needed]

Game development

In March 2014, Benjamin was involved in a Kickstarter campaign created to fund the development of a video game called Necromancer.[21] It raised £8,016, just beating the goal of £8,000. Benjamin took the role of programmer and co-designer for the game.[22] However, by June 2016, the game had not been released and all supporters were refunded.[23]

Political views

Benjamin self-identifies as a classical liberal.[24] Others have described him as anti-progressive[25] and right-wing.

Nieman Journalism Lab,[26] Vice magazine,[2] and Mic[27] have described Benjamin as "right-wing", while Redbrick[6] and Salon[15] have described him as "alt-right" or "alt-right sympathizer". Benjamin has rejected these labels.[14] Although he has criticised the alt-right for "collectivist" and "authoritarian" thinking, he has argued that the movement is a reaction to comparable leftist racism stating, "By framing the argument as the progressive left advocating for minorities against whites, they [the social justice left] have set the stage for a group to become the antagonist for this position—which is precisely what the alt-right is."[10] A piece in The Daily Dot stated that although Benjamin is not part of the alt-right, his videos concern "favourite alt-right targets" such as "feminism, Islam, Black Lives Matter, and the notion of straight white male privilege".[10]

Benjamin has opposed movements opposed to online misogyny, such as the British group 'Reclaim the Internet', which he called "social communism".[6][13] He has been characterised as "deliberately provocative",[10] "unabashedly politically incorrect",[12] and "anti-progressive."[25] He has been cited as one of the "most controversial YouTubers" by WatchMojo, who claimed that he "clearly doesn't shy away from saying stuff that others find offensive."[28] In a November 2016 opinion piece, Vice criticised Benjamin's "logic-before-all attitude", claiming that "when you're speaking on issues of a social nature that cannot be boiled down to textbook definitions of words, it's not really an approach that works particularly well".[2] Vice also compared him with Paul Joseph Watson, a writer for American far-right conspiracy site InfoWars.[29]

Benjamin was both a vocal supporter of Brexit and economically critical of the European Union.[30] He has described Donald Trump as the lesser of two evils, compared to Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 US presidential election.[31] Prior to the primary election of Clinton as the United States Democratic Party candidate, Benjamin stated he would have preferred Bernie Sanders over Clinton or Trump.[31] Benjamin criticized Emmanuel Macron in his run in the 2017 French presidential election.[26]

Personal life

Benjamin is married and is a father of two children. They live in Swindon, England.[13] He is an atheist.[32]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Carl Benjamin credits". IMDb. Retrieved 11 July 2017.
  2. ^ a b c d Bish, Joe (20 November 2016). "Examining the Right Wing British Blowhards Using YouTube to 'Prove Everybody Wrong'". Vice. Retrieved 3 March 2017.
  3. ^ A Wikipedia Article About Me, a YouTube video in which Carl Benjamin reads this page and makes several comments about its accuracy.
  4. ^ a b "About SargonofAkkad100". YouTube.
  5. ^ Benjamin, Carl (25 April 2015). "100,000 Subscriber Vlog and Recommendations". YouTube. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  6. ^ a b c d e Moore, James (2 June 2016). "Birmingham MP iHn Epicentre of Twitter Abuse Storm". Redbrick. Retrieved 29 May 2017.
  7. ^ Tamburro, Paul (13 March 2017). "JonTron: 'Wealthy Blacks Commit More Crime Than Poor Whites'". CraveOnline. Retrieved 19 March 2017.
  8. ^ a b Tamburro, Paul (14 March 2017). "The JonTron Controversy and Why Parents Should Be Wary of YouTube". CraveOnline. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  9. ^ Tamburro, Paul (27 June 2017). "VidCon Controversy Continues YouTube's Descent into Drama". CraveOnline. Retrieved 11 July 2017.
  10. ^ a b c d Rozsa, Matthew (7 September 2016). "A Deep Dive into the Alt-right's Greatest YouTube Hits". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 5 March 2017.
  11. ^ a b c Straumstein, Carl (11 November 2014). "#Gamergate and Games Research". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  12. ^ a b c d Healey, Jon (11 June 2015). "The Guardian uses copyright to shush a critic of its cultural criticism". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 15 May 2016. Sargon used seemingly every frame from Anyangwe's 3-minute, 49-second video. He found fault with most of the points she made, as well as the way she made them. After watching his piece, it's clear that there's no point in going to the Guardian's site to see the original because he's just shown you the whole thing.
  13. ^ a b c d Daubney, Martin (5 June 2016). "I set out to troll her – why all this fuss about 600 rape tweets?". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 5 March 2017.
  14. ^ a b Menegus, Bryan (27 February 2017). "Prominent YouTubers Find Great Anti-Semitic Hill to Die on". Gizmodo. Retrieved 17 March 2017.
  15. ^ a b Rozsa, Matthew (15 February 2017). "How PewDiePie 'fudged the labels' to avoid anti-Semitism claims because of his YouTube videos". Salon. Retrieved 17 March 2017.
  16. ^ Alonso, Nicolás (21 February 2017). "Diccionario del mundo Trump". El País (in Spanish). Retrieved 10 July 2017.
  17. ^ Benjamin, Carl (18 May 2015). "The Epic of Gilgamesh (Complete Audiobook, Unabridged)". YouTube. Retrieved 31 May 2017.
  18. ^ Benjamin, Carl (11 June 2015). "Enuma Elish (Enûma Eliš) (Complete Audiobook, Unabridged)". YouTube. Retrieved 31 May 2017.
  19. ^ Benjamin, Carl (13 August 2015). "Ishtar Will Not Tire – An Akkadian Erotic Hymn". YouTube. Retrieved 31 May 2017.
  20. ^ Benjamin, Carl (18 September 2015). "Exaltation of Inanna". YouTube. Retrieved 31 May 2017.
  21. ^ Cross, Beren (26 March 2014). "Zombie slayers call for start-up funders". Swindon Advertiser. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  22. ^ Mark (20 April 2014). "Necromancer– The RPG/Strategy Game That Makes You The Bad Guy". Siliconera. Curse, Inc. Retrieved 13 March 2017.
  23. ^ Necromancer by Other Worlds Software Kickstarter. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  24. ^ "Sargon of Akkad: Classical Liberal or Libertarian? (Part 2)". Youtube. 7 December 2016. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
  25. ^ a b Romano, Aja (30 June 2017). "Gorilla memes, YouTube trolls, and McMansion copyright fights: this week in internet culture". Vox. Retrieved 1 July 2017.
  26. ^ a b Ryan, Padraic (22 May 2017). ""Who's your 4chan correspondent?" (and other questions Storyful thinks newsrooms should be asking after the French election)". Nieman Journalism Lab. Retrieved 29 May 2017.
  27. ^ Smith IV, Jack (20 March 2017). "YouTube's LGBTQ restriction isn't censorship. It's laziness". Mic. Retrieved 16 April 2017.
  28. ^ "Top 10 Controversial YouTube Channels – TopX". WatchMojo.com. 3 December 2015. Retrieved 10 July 2017.
  29. ^ "Examining the Right Wing British Blowhards Using YouTube to 'Prove Everybody Wrong'". Vice. 17 November 2016. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  30. ^ Benjamin, Carl (24 June 2016). "Britain chooses Freedom over Fear". YouTube. Retrieved 31 March 2017.
  31. ^ a b Benjamin, Carl (20 November 2016). "Blitzing Politics with Secular Talk". YouTube. Retrieved 31 March 2017.
  32. ^ Benjamin, Carl (14 May 2017). "What is Your Religion?". YouTube. Retrieved 31 March 2017.
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