Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who killed more than 90 people in attacks on Friday, was motivated by a toxic mélange of far-right ideology largely revolving around his intense hatred of Islam. The 1500 page “manifesto” he posted to the internet – what appears to be a grab-bag of his own writing and material cut and pasted from assorted right-wing sites and even the Unabomber’s manifesto – crackles with denunciations of Muslims, “Marxists” and the assorted other bogeymen that haunt right-wing dreams.
And it’s also filled with denunciations of feminism that could easily have come from the posts and comments of Men’s Rights and misogynist “manosphere” blogs like The Spearhead, In Mala Fide, and, well, quite a few other sites I write about regularly on this blog. (Not to mention a few of this blog’s misogynist trolls.) In passage after passage, the ideology is the same, the language is the same, even the specific obsessions are the same – from no-fault divorce to the evils of “Sex and the City.” (Download the entire thing from the links here.)
I haven’t had time to go through the manifesto in great detail yet, but I wanted to share with you some selections from it that I think will strike most readers of this blog as strangely familiar.
The following selections, denouncing, among other things, the “’Sex and the City’ lifestyle,”appear to have been written by Breivik himself:
It’s the destructive and suicidal “Sex and the City” lifestyle (modern feminism, sexual revolution) which we are taught to revere as the truth. In that setting, men are not men anymore, but metro sexual and emotional beings that are there to serve the purpose as a never-criticising soul mate to the new age feminist woman goddess. The perfect matriarchy has now been fulfilled and complete equality has finally been achieved. The fact that mankind will seize to exist within three generations with this type of regime is irrelevant. Long live cultural Marxism! …
Isolated, “sex and the city lifestyle” is relatively harmless, but if you glorify it and ram it down the throat of mainstream society like we see today it becomes a lethal and destructive societal force as we are witnessing which eventually leads to a complete breakdown of moral/ethics, the nuclear family model and a sustainable fertility rate which again is leading us to the extinction of Europeans.
Breivik goes on to rant about STDs and no-fault divorce, before moving on to another favorite obsession of manosphere misogynists, the supposed sexual “capital” of manipulative women:
Females have a significantly higher proportion of erotic capital than males due to biological differences (men have significantly more prevalent sexual urges than females and are thus easily manipulated). The female manipulation of males has been institutionalised during the last decades and is a partial cause of the feminisation of men in Europe. This highly underestimated factor has contributed to the creation and rise of the matriarchal systems which are now dominating Western European countries. …
He also blames women for the spread of what he considers evil “cultural Marxism” and multiculturalism:
Fact: 60-70% of all cultural Marxists/multiculturalists are women. This partly explains why the gradual feminist revolution is directly linked to the implementation of multiculturalist doctrines. These feminist cultural Marxists do not only want more benefits and rights for themselves. They want it all, and have more or less been awarded with everything they could ever dream of achieving. They now have complete matriarchal supremacy domestically and exercise substantial influence in politics. …
Obsessed with the purported danger that Islam will outbreed the West, Breivik offers an assortment of creepy solutions to increase the fertility of Western whites. (It’s not altogether clear to me if these are all his own views, but they certainly are consistent with what he says elsewhere in the manifesto.) After suggesting limiting contraception and banning abortion, Breivik offers this “solution”:
Discourage women in general to strive for full time careers. This will involve certain sexist and discriminating policies but should increase the fertility rate by up to 0,1-0,2 points.
Women should not be encouraged by society/media to take anything above a bachelor’s degree but should not be prevented from taking a master or PhD. Males on the other hand should obviously continue to be encouraged to take higher education – bachelor, master and PhD. …
And then he’s back on his “Sex and the City” hobbyhorse:
Discourage women in general to strive for “sex and the city/Madonna” lifestyles. The mass media are currently actively glorifying/encouraging “sex and the city/Madonna” lifestyles which involves the glorification of casual sex, multiple sex partners and generally an extremely liberal individualistic lifestyle hostile to the traditional nuclear family values. As such, the non-restrictions of the mass media is the main cause for our unsustainable fertility rate of 1,5.
The indirect media/government glorification campaigns through individual artists, various series, movies and media coverage in general should reflect this new shift (no more glorification of “sex and the city lifestyles” or equivalent portrayals. No longer should women be pressured to have equal success regarding their career as males.
Womens “new role” should be actively illustrated and glorified through series, movies and commercials. This will involve significant restrictions in media freedoms and rights. These restrictions and reforms will result in an increased fertility rate of approximately 0,2-0,3 points.
The end result for implementing the above reforms would be an increase in the fertility rate up from 1,5 to approximately 2,1-2,4 which would be sustainable.
However, this will also involve significant restrictions in women’s rights and media rights.
And, like many in the manosphere, he also holds out hope for “artificial wombs,” which would of course reduce the inconvenience of relying on women to cooperate with his plans.
Large chunks of the manifesto consist of cut-and-pasted blog posts from an anonymous far-right Norwegian blogger known as Fjordman, whose now defunct blog can be found here. (According to Andrew Brown in the Guardian article linked to above, Breivik and Fjordman are not the same person.)
Here are some selections from the Fjordman posts that Breivik includes in his manifesto. Again, much of this will seem very familiar to many of you, I am sure.
For all the talk about “girl power” and “women kicking ass” which you see on movies these days, if the men of your “tribe” are too weak or demoralised to protect you, you will be enslaved and crushed by the men from other “tribes” before you can say “Vagina Monologues”. Which means that if you break down men’s masculinity, their willingness and ability to defend themselves and their families, you destroy the country. That’s exactly what Western women have done for the last forty years. ….
The male protective instinct doesn’t take action because Scandinavian women have worked tirelessly to eradicate it, together with everything else that smacks of traditional masculinity. Because of this, feminism has greatly weakened Scandinavia, and perhaps Western civilisation as whole. …
Didn’t feminists always claim that the world would be a better place with women in the driver’s seat, because they wouldn’t sacrifice their own children? Well, isn’t that exactly what they are doing now? Smiling and voting for parties that keep the doors open to Muslim immigration, the same Muslims who will be attacking their children tomorrow? …
Misandry, the hatred of men, isn’t necessarily less prevalent than misogyny, the hatred of women. The difference is that the former is much more socially acceptable.
If all oppression comes from Western men, it becomes logical to try weakening them as much as possible. If you do, a paradise of peace and equality awaits us at the other side of the rainbow. Well congratulations to Western European women. You’ve succeeded in harassing and ridiculing your own sons into suppressing many of their masculine instincts. To your surprise, you didn’t enter a feminist Nirvana, but paved the way for an unfolding Islamic hell. ….
Feminists claim that the reason why women haven’t been as numerous in politics and science as men is due to male oppression of women. Some of this is true. But it is not the whole story. Being male means having to prove something, to achieve something, in a greater way than it does for women. In addition to this, the responsibility for child rearing will always fall more heavily on women than on men. ….
it was in fact the women who started this whole “single is best” culture that now permeates much of the West. Since women initiate most divorces and a divorce can potentially mean financial ruin for a man, it shouldn’t really be too surprising that many men hesitate to get involved at all. … At the same time, women during the past few decades have made it a lot easier to have a girlfriend without getting married. So women make it riskier to get married and easier to stay unmarried, and then they wonder why men “won’t commit?” Maybe too many women didn’t think all this feminism stuff quite through before jumping on the bandwagon? …..
The elaborate welfare state model in Western Europe is frequently labelled as “the nanny state,” but perhaps it could also be named “the husband state.” Why? Well, in a traditional society, the role of men and husbands is to physically protect and financially provide for their women. In our modern society, part of this task has simply been “outsourced” to the state, which helps explain why women in general give a disproportionate support to high taxation and pro-welfare state parties. The state has simply become a substitute husband, upheld by taxation of their ex-husbands. ….
Radical feminism has bred suspicion and hostility, not cooperation. And what’s more, it has no in any way eradicated the basic sexual attraction between feminine women and masculine men. If people do not find this in their own country, they travel to another country or culture to find it, which in our age of globalisation is easier than ever. A striking number of Scandinavian men find their wives in East Asia, Latin America or other nations with a more traditional view of femininity, and a number of women find partners from more conservative countries. …
radical feminism has been one of the most important causes of the current weakness of Western civilisation, both culturally and demographically. Feminists, often with a Marxist world view, have been a crucial component in establishing the suffocating public censorship of Political Correctness in Western nations. They have also severely weakened the Western family structure, and contributed to making the West too soft and self-loathing to deal with aggression from Muslims. …
Well, after two generations of Second Wave Feminism, Ms. Willis and Ms. Beauvoir have had their way: The West has skyrocketing divorce rates and plummeting birth rates, leading to a cultural and demographic vacuum that makes us vulnerable to a take-over by… Islam. And feminists still aren’t satisfied. ….
Feminists claim that women have been victims of men, that men have oppressed women for centuries and that the sexes are equal. Denying this will result in the smears “misogynist” and “male chauvinist pig”. But equalising the sexes has led to a crippling feminisation of Western society … portraying women as oppressed victims and the equals of males is one example of how the pursuit of equality is being used to destroy our society and undermine – and therefore be in conflict with – Mother nature. ….
I’ll continue going through the manifesto to see what else I can find. If any of you decide to do the same thing, and find other selections in it that you find telling, please post them in the comments below.
I would also like to find specific writings on manosphere blogs – posts or comments – that directly parallel these selections from Breivik’s manifesto. If any of you are willing to help, again, please post your findings in the comments below, along with URLs to the sources of the manosphere quotes.
Ideas have consequences. Vile, hateful ideas have vile, hateful consequences.
For more on Breivik’s misogyny, see this post on Red Light Politics.
PZ Myers has more on Breivik’s noxious ideology, including his hatred of atheists, here.
@Kirby it’s like in sports, where they, for ex, set the line of total goals scored in a game at 3.5 and ppl bet either it’ll be less or more. xD
My line is 10 days whether he’ll still be here or not. xD Johnny took the under, I took the over xD Other ppl can join :3
Also Holy Sudden Snapping Batman O_O;; All that swearing and anger xD
Ami,
“Again, I find it amusing that my first appearance on this blog was disagreeing w/ David, arguing w/ some of the posters, defending the MRA guy”
you are a girl, you have “fairy” scripted all over you. Even when you say offensive stuff, you make it sound bubbly and funny. I dont know if you could ever pass for a troll.
I on the other hand speak with grandilocuence and absolutes and generalizations that are dissonant here. And Im a guy. Easy target.
I think ‘adorable and sneaky’ describes most of the pets I’ve ever had…
oh yohami you have no idea….
Was this also the motivation for your initial “intervention”. Were we beating on the poor MRM, and you felt you had to put a stop to it?
XDDDDD
I can’t stop laughing xD
(it’s funny that the way I wrote actually is the reason ppl thought I was a troll when I was comics blogging, but of course that’s not rly what’s hilarious about what he said xD )
“And this is stupid. If personal report is useless, when why do we have opinions? why check blogs? why talk to your friends? why consume poetry, literature? why mix yourself with different people who can alter your views on the world?
When you look at what molded your views and your persona, the important stuff… was it the “data” and scientific method? or was it the people? do you know people whose you can talk who really give you something and views that you never had before? you know, like human contact?
How about art? how about expression?
Ah, but thats useless? useless for?”
Nice strawman, YOHAMI.
Kirby wasn’t advocating that we live like robots, with absolutely no emotion and nothing but pure data in and out. But when one speaks on important issues like Civil Rights, Science etc., it is important to have actual DATA to prove one’s points, as opposed to one’s personal opinion. A personal opinion is only valid for the person who holds it, and while you may understand it, how can one be certain that everyone else does? Opinions are prone to interpretation so much that they’re unreliable, while data is hard and cuts through subjectivity to provide objectivity (which is important if one wants to even argue or debate. Seriously, even if you’re going on and on about how you’re not trying to convert anyone, you could at least get the facts straight in your statements, otherwise who will take you seriously?)
Sigh. Again with the misunderstanding of ad hominem
If Kirby had said, “Because you are from Argentina, and don’t speak English as a native language, of course you don’t understand how argument works”, that would be ad hominem.
But you said you had been arguing from ignorance, and pretending that was a good position. Kirby said that was a failure to properly argue, which was topical, and probative. Just because you found it insulting, doesn’t make it ad hominen, any more than when we call Marc dishonest. He is dishonest. It’s unpleasant,and personal, but relevant.
So Kirby took the most charitable of positions (i.e. you are arguing in good faith, but from ignorance), and told you that when you had facts, to come back.
He could have called you dishonest (there is evidence to support it, from your admission that you have not the information to back the claims you made, and that you knew you didn’t), but he didn’t.
Which is very much not ad hominem.
I on the other hand speak with grandilocuence and absolutes and generalizations that are dissonant here.
Maybe you shouldn’t speak in absolutes and generalizations? :3
You want to learn, that is some advice :3
Grandiloquence is fun, though. Stick with that. 🙂
Wait a tic…
“I do consider other people´s views and conclusions and process invaluables. Even yours.”
This pretty much shows that you are unwilling to actually discuss or argue, just spout off words and then…get angry when people ask questions or respond?
I speak w/ Amiloquence :3
Unfortunately Lynoquence sounds like incredibly articulate lino…actually that would be pretty cool! Imagine if the lino in my hallway could help me with editing…
That would be awesome 😀
I’d ttlly get some Lynoquence :3
@YOHAMI:
““You already have made it clear that you don’t care what we think”
I also said I give my views, I get yours, we both gain, etc.”
Yes, you said exactly that. But did you mean it? When I’ve expressed why I think your opinion is wrong, did you engage it? Did you show in any way that you were taking what we said and considering it? Or were you simply saying what you thought, and annoyed when people said you were wrong? My money is on the second. This is my reasoning on the “you don’t care what we think.” You’ve already formed your conclusion.
Interesting to note that one of those conclusions was “almost everything out there are intentional lies.”
““Are you really going down the anti-science route? ”
Yeah, because “I hate science”, right?”
You’ve said, and I quote:
“If not, whats left? data? studies? most of these stuff is done for authorities who shape the views in whatever form they decide to, because its convenient to them.”
This to me smacks of anti-science, because science is founded upon (and in fact produces) those studies and data. Dismissing them merely as a convenience is pretty much anti-scientific. No doubt studies are misused, and scientists aren’t perfect, but simply dismissing studies as a convenience dismisses all the real and tangible benefits that these studies and data have brought.
“Beautiful stated. This is the most sense you have made so far. And I agree.
“A single individual reporting on his/her personal experience as justification for a viewpoint… It is (ultimately) absolutely useless.”
And this is stupid. If personal report is useless, when why do we have opinions? why check blogs? why talk to your friends? why consume poetry, literature? why mix yourself with different people who can alter your views on the world?”
Interesting that you seem to have missed this line:
“Well, gather a large group together, all with different experiences, and find some commonalities.”
Interesting also that you assume I think art is antithetical to science, and therefore useless. Well, it isn’t, so there is another point of agreement. What I meant was that a single person cannot use only his/her single experience to justify something. Gather together a group of diverse experiences, like I said in the paragraph you loved so much, and you can weed out what is simply the noise of life, and what is truth.
“If you find my findings wrong, which ones?”
You think that logic is inherently a male attribute, and emotion is an inherently female attribute. You think that most of what is out there is a deliberate lie. You believe that “we are animals. instincts rule.” You have justified none of these, and unsurprisingly I think all of them are wrong.
“I do consider other people´s views and conclusions and process invaluables. Even yours.”
See, I don’t. And this is the difference between you and I. I don’t believe a person who continually asserts while avoiding trying to justify those assertions, someone who does not argue in good faith, some one who insists on reading more into other people’s arguments then balking when they perceive the same being done to them, and people who believe that they, solely as an individual, have all the tools necessary to come to know truth.. That person’s opinions are not valuable.
Or, in much shorter words, what redlocker said. Thanks, redlocker. 🙂
That last paragraph should have read:
“See, I don’t think everybody’s views are invaluable.” Silly mistake, really.
Lyn,
“Well, for one, I think you are wrong about women being irrational and men rational, and that this should be the basis for treating them differently in confrontations. Is that a proper way to disagree? Or am I twisting your words?”
The phrase “women are irrational men are rational” is already tinted with negative connotations, as in women were incapable of rational thinking. I did not present that phrase, someone else did and I flew with it. Apparently I shouldnt have. Its too much of a broad stroke.
I would argue that women generally present a higher / more extensive palette of emotional intelligence, and that men generally present a deeper, more focused mechanical intelligence, and that both have their cons and pros and that generally the approaches differ, and that this is general enough so one can, generally, predict what these approaches would be.
But rather than keep elaborating on how I view this, I´d like to hear whats your take on the subject.
Is this all crap? inexistent? existent but only cultural? none of the above? etc.
Johnny Pez,
“Was this also the motivation for your initial “intervention”. Were we beating on the poor MRM, and you felt you had to put a stop to it?”
Someone accusing somebody else of what they themselves are doing. This is one of my buttons.
NWO was trashing with nonsense. No aims to defend his posture. But the attack he was receiving was nonsense too.
@YOHAMI:
My opinion is this. We simply don’t know. There are biological difference between women and men, and in fact women and men aren’t the only two options. There is intersex, trans, cis, homosexual, heterosexual, bi, asexual, etc. etc. Scientists have found some differences in brain structure between the sexes, but unfortunately there are three confounding factors to these studies:
1) The sample size is always rather small, and usually college kids.
2) Brain structure most likely changes depending on use or whatever, so we don’t know if having a certain structure causes people to be logical or being logical causes people to have that structure, or some complicated interplay.
3) We still don’t know how sex relates to the brain structure.
Here’s my solution. We still don’t know how mental attributes are predicted by gender. So don’t bother with it. At worst, you’ll be giving someone a fair shot when they might not deserve it (if mental aptitudes are determined by sex). At best, you’ll be avoiding harmful stereotyping that causes a lot of harm to people (by continually asserting that women are emotional, therefore they cannot reason as well, or men are logical, therefore cannot empathize as well).
You’ve come to a conclusion with only your experience to justify. Again, confirmation bias. Why not assume people have equal abilities, and take each person on merit rather than using their sex as a factor?
Pecunium,
“Sigh. Again with the misunderstanding of ad hominem”
Which seems to be a very popular trend here.
“But you said you had been arguing from ignorance”
No, I said I was ignorant about the specific MRM points, and that I have no interest or expertise to defend the MRM, but that I see some of their stuff has validity, without going into detail – because its not my field. I never pretended to make “good positions about the MRM”.
“He could have called you dishonest (there is evidence to support it, from your admission that you have not the information to back the claims you made, and that you knew you didn’t)”
Which claims did I made with no data, dude?
Ami,
“Maybe you shouldn’t speak in absolutes and generalizations? :3”
That, for one. In the same hand, people here shouldnt “project” and twist and polarize. I get I make myself into an easy target. Do people here realize the mechanics are unusable to talk stuff properly when there are dissonant views?
This stuff makes for a good flame wars but its useless for real debate
No, yohAMI, I didn’t mean your intervention in this thread, I meant your initial decision to intervene on Manboobz. Why us? Was it because David was hypocritically mocking the rampant misogyny within the MRM when feminists are JUST AS BAD?
I think that if there is a difference between the rationality and irrationality of the genders it is cultural. I also think that, the difference is not that significant. I would add that assuming that, when you are talking to a woman in a conflict, you should appeal to her emotions and when talking to men you should appeal to their logical faculties is deeply offensive. The fact of the matter is – people respond in diverse ways to conflict. Some particular conflicts might be incredibly difficult for one person and not a problem at all for another. Some people won’t even be aware they are in a conflict and will think they’re just in a really interesting discussion! Basically, it is best to treat people like they are people, listen to how they respond to you and go from there. I tend to consider whether or not I’d like to be treated that way, and if they don’t respond well to how I would like to be treated then I do something else. Thinking ‘oh, well, a woman is more irrational so I’ll approach her this way’ has, imo, a tendency to blind a person to nuance.
I mean, statistically, when I talk to someone of asian appearance at my university, most will speak English as a second language. But if I assume that of EVERY person of asian appearance and speak slowly or use pigeon English when I address them, I risk, at best, offending someone, or at worst, perpetuating their oppression. Or looking like a complete idiot. Things I like to avoid – so I try to avoid making assumptions about people.