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.
@Pecunium:
Yeah, so PUA is out then. He still is a big proponent of the Alpha-Beta framework, (unless this is wrong as well) and he still has a context of giving advice in an extremely gendered and stereotyping fashion. Plus echoing the MRA sentiment that “women are children.” But of course, this is just be taking issue with the framing…
Well, hell, three quarters of the meaning in a statement is in the framing. If I were to take the statement “All black people are subhuman” out of context, it would be rather awful. In context of this very paragraph, suddenly it means something entirely different. It doesn’t matter whether you can take the words “All X are subhuman” and shuffle in whatever you want for X, the context matters almost as much as the statement itself.
YAHOMI wants us to take all of his statements in a vacuum, out of context. Well, that makes everything he says pretty much meaningless.
Jill the Spinster,
“You are telling us you are a chameleon? You have different opinions based upon your audience?”
No Jill, but several circles have different language and different ways to process information, different tabues, different objectives, etc. My opinions are the same, the way you need to express them varies depending on whom you are talking to. Theres a reason of why different groups cant communicate with each other and resort to aggression and exclusion. And as I said, each circle is also missing pieces of the full picture.
“Then you say you need to be more gender neutral in the future to attract a bigger audience to your blog? Are you in market research?”
Im a musician. I work as a game programmer. I´ve been split in many parts, I want to unify myself with a single voice. I want to be able to communicate with people, and bridge.
Also I see these different circles cant resolve themselves because of the pieces they are missing. Part of my interest is finding what is REALLY wrong, what are the real problems and issues, so I can think of ways to solve these problems. I see very few people is actually solving the problems, and that a lot of new problems are generated because of the onesided views that characterize each group.
So, I dont belong here, I dont belong anywhere. Im walking and learning. And learning languages and picking stuff and sharing.
“Here, when other MRA trolls were around, you were more pro MRA, now that they are gone you said you didn’t believe that at all, that you were testing us?”
Im not PRO MRA. But I get that you confounded me with one, because of some similar characteristics. Im pro “rights” though.
Lyn,
I get that when I say “women more emotional intelligent” that is still viewed as a prejudice. I once told on ozymandias blog that “men have penis” and she saw it as prejudice.
Im not interested in prejudices. These should all go away. Not really interested on circling about prejudices.
If I “see” that one gender is different to the other, but happens that saying it out loud on some circles evokes a shit storm, what do you think I should do?
What you are is flailing. I read your blog. It has a theme… the theme is that feminism is bad, thinks ill of men and women are to be manipulated because they are less rational/intelligent than men.
In short… a fellow traveller of MRAs, if not one in fact, which is in keeping with what you said in the post about the animation. Taken as a whole you are both dishonest, and a misogynist
gender queer and trans.. whats that?
kirbywarp,
“Plus echoing the MRA sentiment that “women are children.””
Thats your projection, again… I already explained what I mean by it to several people here
Pecunium
“I read your blog. It has a theme… the theme is that feminism is bad, thinks ill of men and women are to be manipulated because they are less rational/intelligent than men.”
Yeah, right, you nailed it. not.
kirbywarp,
“He still is a big proponent of the Alpha-Beta framework”
Yes, big proponent indeed.
YOHAMI: res ipso loquitor.
Guys, I think this one is out of candy. I’m pretty much for bed. If I’m wrong, save some for me.
“If I “see” that one gender is different to the other, but happens that saying it out loud on some circles evokes a shit storm, what do you think I should do?”
Admit that, just maybe, you are experiencing confirmation bias. And also admit that, if you do observe a difference, this doesn’t justify treating women like they can’t apprehend logic. Basically, we’re looking at cultural difference – for example a guy might really want a hug but be unable to ask for one because he thinks it would seem unmanly, a woman might not feel like she can refuse one even if it makes her uncomfortable because it’s not in the social script. So…take things on a person to person basis rather than trying to come up with some grand system for understanding people.
Alternatively you can talk about these things that you have ‘objectively’ observed on blogs like these and have people assume you’re a misogynist idiot. Or, go to other blogs where people agree that women are strange creatures and their habits should be observed and documented and have fun together.
“Im not PRO MRA. But I get that you confounded me with one, because of some similar characteristics. Im pro “rights” though.”
You aren’t PRO MRA, you just fit the definitions of someone who is.
“Also I see these different circles cant resolve themselves because of the pieces they are missing. Part of my interest is finding what is REALLY wrong, what are the real problems and issues, so I can think of ways to solve these problems. I see very few people is actually solving the problems, and that a lot of new problems are generated because of the onesided views that characterize each group.
So, I dont belong here, I dont belong anywhere. Im walking and learning. And learning languages and picking stuff and sharing.”
Well hell, and here I thought you actually wanted to argue about something. So essentially, in order to communicate your opinion to a group, you find the need to say something directly opposing to a statement to another group.
You don’t belong here.
You don’t belong over there.
You are not walking and learning, you are not learning languages and picking stuff and sharing. You are the snake trying to convince the poor helpless person of something, trying to make them powerless to resist you. You are using whatever language you can to adapt and manipulate your prey until they agree with you (at least nominally). And you are absolutely uninterested in anything anyone else says to the contrary. If they don’t agree with you, they are just being defensive. That isn’t what is REALLY wrong, only you, the walker of all lands, know what is.
I’ve had about enough of your slimy, patronizing, smug and self-satisfied garbage. If you don’t understand how context works, how it is wrong to treat women a certain way because they are women, and how an intellectual and honest debate functions, then I’m out. Take your nonsense and shove it.
And I too am going to head home. And watch Buffy and finish my Dr. Seuss quilt. Awesomesauce!
Lyn,
“Admit that, just maybe, you are experiencing confirmation bias.”
Of course. BIAS is the big enemy in all its shapes.
“And also admit that, if you do observe a difference, this doesn’t justify treating women like they can’t apprehend logic.”
But, I didnt say that. “justify treating women like they…” whatever follows that line is going to be wrong.
“Basically, we’re looking at cultural difference – for example a guy might really want a hug but be unable to ask for one because he thinks it would seem unmanly, a woman might not feel like she can refuse one even if it makes her uncomfortable because it’s not in the social script. So…take things on a person to person basis rather than trying to come up with some grand system for understanding people.”
Im after a grand system for understanding people.
“Alternatively you can talk about these things that you have ‘objectively’ observed on blogs like these and have people assume you’re a misogynist idiot. Or, go to other blogs where people agree that women are strange creatures and their habits should be observed and documented and have fun together.”
People are strange creatures. Not just women.
Aight guys, Im out. Thanks for the heated whatever this was. Im exhausted and have a lot to think about.
Thanks Lyn for being the best argumenter here today.
Kirby, man, so much energy on attacking and defeating and taking sides (and creating sides) and so little on understanding and siding and finding bridges.
Pecunium, wtf.
Ami, etc, etc.
Have fun.
YOHAMI, summed up, in his own words:
Everything you say is about you.
Every word you say invokes a meaning, pulls a context, nurtures a frame.
Saying “nice” puts you in the nice frame, “problem” makes you the problem, “happy” pulls the happy, “struggle” makes you struggle. Calling somebody a “loser” puts the “loser” word in your mouth, saying “sorry” makes you a sorry person, saying something is “delicious” makes you part of the delicious reality.
You might think you are talking about external subjects, but you are always the subject, you are the one carrying the meaning, the one choosing to perceive, to connect the dots, the one elaborating, pouring it out.
Every time you pronounce a word, you trigger a process that gives the world a piece of you, and asks the world to give you back that same thing.
Just like when a kid says “milk” and he gets it.
Everything you say is your signature, every word is your epitaph.
“women more emotional intelligent” – sorry I just spotted this – YOHAMI didn’t argue that women are more emotionally intelligent. Insead, argued that women were more emotional and irrational than men and hence required differend handling.
OK, NOW I’m going to watch Buffy.
MRAs are not just misogynists, they hang-out in conservative/Right-Wing blogs and forums and are fascinated by guns. Many are fascinated by HBD (human bio-diversity), a racist theory that claims that White people have a higher IQ than Black people and they post on HBD forums/blogs. Others are Christian fundamentalists and they post on Christian blogs/forums. Therefore it’s logical that Anders Behring Breivik use the same terminology that MRAs use, he probably read many MRAs forums and blogs and MRAs probably posted in the Right-Wing blogs/forums that he read.
you know whenever as an MRA i point out a feminist action either by a group or a singular woman I get shouted down for “generalising” or “not all feminists are like that” yet articles like this are attempting to blame all men for the actions of one , either this works both ways or doesnt work at all .
Mediumdave wrote, “Over at Jezebel, I see that they’re knocking the stuffing out of a dumb op-ed from a Finnish author who believes that obviously this mass murderer would’ve been “cured” by having a girlfriend…”
Didn’t they say similar stuff about Sodini?
NWOslave wrote, “No Holly, you can’t/won’t answer because you enjoy the hatred of men in society. It must be quite a cozy feeling to know you can revile and demean men while remaining aloof to any criticism. And has nothing to do with women existing. What a poor arguement.
“How nice it must be for the perfect ones. You could of course admit that the hatred of men is quite acceptable, but you won’t. You like it and you want more.”
I guess the other option is that NWOslave doesn’t feel like calling out mass murder not because he’s missing the point, but because he thinks it was *justified*…? o.O
Okay, I’m a little late to the “party” here (oh, did someone mention popcorn?? bacon-flavoured for me, please and thanx!), so please forgive if I cover some ground that’s already been covered. I copied some items that I want to respond to, and most of them are a few pages back, I’m afraid.
Yes, because we’ve heard those ideas all before, often in defence of and justification for the “rightful” subjugation and subordination of women to men. It’s difficult to not put within context words and ideas that have, for hundreds if not thousands of years, been framed within that context.
You’re correct, one could say that, but that’s not what our cultural narratives have been saying, and when feminists say that it might be good if men shed that “not emotional” layer and women shed that “hyper emotional” layer (which many, if not most, feminists believe are largely culturally imposed layers, not absolutely genetically imposed), for example, we’re accused of wanting to emasculate men and masculinize women, and we’re told that this is NOT good for ANYONE and that it will lead to the destruction of civilization. So it’s best if we continue on with the script (i.e., traditional gender roles) that we have been assigned to play, and we’ll call it natural because we’ve scripted it that way.
I DO believe you. And I do believe that you think that there are many things that are f**cked up and wrong, and that you are trying to establish whether the f**cked up wrongness is nature or nurture so maybe we can work on fixing things. But because you see certain elements being played out in real life, I think that, perhaps, that leads you to believe that it is mostly nature at play, therefore more static and less “fixable” than just understanding that this is the way things are and just working with it as best we can from within the framework of “that’s the way things are”. That, however, is how cultural narratives propagate and perpetuate.
Part Deux….
Yes, indeed it is! And in experiments designed to test nature/nurture (you could Google them or I could provide links later on, I don’t have the links at my fingertips right now),
it was found that people react to babies dressed in garb indicative of a particular sex (blue for boy, pink for girl, for example) in accordance with cultural narratives about baby boys and baby girls, when the baby is a boy dressed in colour indicative of a girl and vice versa.
Not only do they want to uphold stereotyping and stereotypes, but the way they talk out of both sides of their mouths, they want to go back to utilizing these stereotypes in order to
denigrate women while stepping on them (metaphorically speaking) in order to, once again, raise men to the lofty position of gods of the world… to reclaim that rightful throne that was
so wrongfully snatched.
Yohami: “[S]everal circles have different language and different ways to process information, different tabues, different objectives, etc. My opinions are the same, the way you need to express them varies depending on whom you are talking to.”
Well, we’ve already had the German Scott Adams visit us. Why not the Latin American Scott Adams? Yohami, dude … what you need to do, clearly, is put this at the top of your blog, like Scott did. That way NO ONE can misinterpret your words.:
(Or, you know. Edit it to suit your own audience.)
“Im a musician. I work as a game programmer.”
Wait a sec. Didn’t Yohami tell us he owned a programming company and was responsible for hiring/firing/making company policy for several employees? Weird.
He also refuses to give them time off for their families because $MONEY$.