Earlier today I wrote about some Men’s Rights Redditors who endorsed the views of Norwegian shooter Anders Breivik – without knowing that the views they were endorsing were his. But others in the manosphere have stepped up to defend Breivik’s manifesto (if not his actions) plainly and explicitly, in full knowledge of just whose ideas they are endorsing.
On In Mala Fide, blogger Ferdinand Bardamu praises Breivik’s “lucidity,” and blames his murderous actions on the evils of a too-liberal society:
[A]nother madman with a sensible manifesto. Another completely rational, intelligent man driven to murderous insanity. And once again, society has zero introspection in regards to its profound ability to turn thoughtful men into lunatic butchers. …
He’s not being sarcastic here. He continues:
That makes HOW many rage killers in the past five years alone? And not just transparent headcases like Jared Loughner or George Sodini, but ordinary men like Pekka-Eric Auvinen or Joe Stack who simply weren’t going to take it anymore. No one bothers to ask WHY all these men suddenly decide to pick up a gun and start shooting people – they’re all written off as crazies. Or the rage killings are blamed on overly permissive gun laws …
Here’s an idea – sick societies produce sick individuals who do sick things. Anders Breivin [sic] murdered nearly a hundred teens (not children, TEENS – they were at a summer camp for young adults) and must pay the price, but the blood of those teens is ultimately on the hands of the society that spat him forth. He is the bastard son of a masochistic, degenerate, rootless world that pisses on its traditions and heritage to elevate perversity, mindless consumerism and ethnic self-hatred to the highest of virtues.
(Bolded text in original.) That final reference to “ethnic self-hatred” seems to be Bardamu’s euphemistic way of complaining that not enough white people are white supremacists.
Then he adds this repulsive final thought on Breivik’s victims:
[S]top acting so fucking shocked that Breivin murdered “children.” As William Rome pointed out, it’s been de rigeur for all of human history for political revolutionaries to kill the heirs of their enemies alongside the enemies themselves, to ensure that the old system would stay dead and buried. … That doesn’t make what he did excusable, but it does make it understandable.
Meanwhile, Chuck of Gucci Little Piggy offers what appears to be a somewhat more restrained, if ultimately more puzzling, defense of Breivik’s manifesto – or at least that portion of the manifesto that Breivik borrowed from the writings of far-right blogger Fjordman.
Chuck complains that Hugo Schwyzer and I are “try[ing] to blame Breivik on MRAs” in our recent posts showing the similarities between Breivik’s ideas and those of many MRAs. Never mind that neither Hugo nor I referred to Breivik as an MRA. I described him as an antifeminist, which is an undeniable fact, whose views are “strikingly similar to many MRAs.” (Emphasis added.) Hugo stated explicitly that he didn’t blame the MRM directly for Breivik’s actions, noting that “[m]ost MRAs – perhaps almost all – reject violence and mass murder as a political tactic.”
Evidently Chuck feels that to even mention the MRM in conjunction with Breivik is some sort of egregious smear, especially since the shooter spent “only” 23 pages of his manifesto writing explicitly about feminism.
Weirdly, after trying to draw a sharp line between Breivik and the MRM, Chuck goes on to apparently endorse Breivik’s (and Fjordman’s) notions about the ways in which feminism “greased the wheels to allow Islam into his country.” The rest of Chuck’s post elaborates on, and seems to fully endorse, Breivik’s/Fjordman’s argument that feminism’s “emasculation of Western men has taken the organic policing mechanism out of the hands of men in society” and thus rendered Western society helpless before the Islamic cultural invaders.
I’ve asked Chuck to clarify if this is indeed what he means to convey in his post. If so, I can only say: If you’re trying to draw a distinction between your ideas and the ideas of a murderous terrorist, you don’t really advance your case by agreeing with the central thrust of these ideas pretty much wholeheartedly.
RW: “I think the psychological differences between Brevik and the average MRA are more important than the ideological similarities. It’s pretty much always personal psychology that is decisive in triggering spree killing, not ideology.
“We can obviously debate how particular psychologies gravitate toward particular ideologies. I think we’d ultimately end up at somewhere very self evident: that many people embrace the same political ideology for very similar reasons, but act on them in different ways and in doing so always put their own personal inflection on them.”
Not really, though. Moderates don’t go on killing sprees hoping to start a revolution. It’s really only people whose ideologies and pet issues are dismissed by the majority as worthless, laughable, or unnecessary who do that. (And yes, there is a psychological component as well — but I’d say that the ideology is at least as telling as the psychological aspect.)
That’s where the MRM and Breivik have something in common. They’ve marginalized themselves through their beliefs. They want these beliefs to be mainstream, but they are (rightly) laughed at, when they say things like women are only good for breeding stock, women’s rights need to be taken away, etc. We saw some MRAs come out after Thomas Ball’s self-immolation and say that they wanted to see a violent revolution. I’m really having a hard time seeing why we can’t discuss the MRM and Breivik in the same light.
Bee: “Real Rape” is a big deal. And we all know rape is 1: Violent, and 2: Committed by people we can vilify. White College Kids (who are still kids, even though they are in their late teens/early twenties, not like the “non-children” on Utoya), don’t commit rape, esp. not if the play sports.
Young Black Men, however, are very prone to rape, esp. when they get near white women.
I’m kind of secondarily confused by Chuck’s argument, after reading so many MRAs lately state that they don’t think rape is that big a deal. So either Chuck is breaking with the rape-apologia section of the MRM and agrees with feminists that rape is, in fact, a very big deal, or he likes to trot it out as a very big deal when convenient for his argument, and treat it otherwise when not.
Like mass murder and terrorism, rape is only a problem when brown people do it.
A hundred years ago, the right wing in the U.S. was busy freaking out over how Real True Americans would be outbred by those barbaric Irish, and Western civilization would be destroyed if Anglo-Saxon women didn’t get busy making more white babies. (Irish, Italians, ethnic Jews, and Eastern Europeans weren’t considered “white” then.) Fast-forward to today: around 70% of Americans identify as having some Irish ethnicity. The doomsayers were right! Those filthy immigrants won the baby-making war!
And the civilization-shattering results… Well, there was that time my brother Conor got drunk and kicked out a bus window at a St. Patrick’s Day parade. But like my mother said at the time, it was completely unfair that they fined him since he didn’t even remember doing it.
I think it would be awesome if everyone on Manboobz started using nonstandard English! We’d lose 90% of our trolls overnight because they’d be too lazy to read what we wrote.
Ami can keep posting in her own dialect, Pecunium can use Middle English, cynickal can use a Jagermonster accent, and the rest of us will just have to start smurfing it up and ryplycyng yll yyr vywyls wyth ys.
Real True Americans would be outbred by those barbaric Irish, and Western civilization would be destroyed if Anglo-Saxon women didn’t get busy making more white babies.
well, it did result in Pat Buchanan, so maybe they had a point.
I think it would be awesome if everyone on Manboobz started using nonstandard English! We’d lose 90% of our trolls overnight because they’d be too lazy to read what we wrote.
hmpf. like they ever read any of the comments before. They’ll still just cherry pick something, misrepresent what was said, and use it to flog their own hobby horses yet again.
summer_snow: I can decipher middle English, I cant speak it, and writing it.. ouch… lots of non-standard letters. I am good back to about Wycliff for early modern, and I speak a few dialects of modern, but that seems differently affected.
On the other hand, it would be occasionally amusing.
I’m kind of secondarily confused by Chuck’s argument, after reading so many MRAs lately state that they don’t think rape is that big a deal. So either Chuck is breaking with the rape-apologia section of the MRM and agrees with feminists that rape is, in fact, a very big deal, or he likes to trot it out as a very big deal when convenient for his argument, and treat it otherwise when not.
Many MRAs see Muslim men as super Alpha men and they are jealous. According to MRAs women want to live in the harem of an Alpha man that treat them like shit and many women are abused when they are married to a Muslim. I’ve seen MRAs blogs where they were talking about the marriage rate between European native women and Muslims and they were saying it’s because these women see Muslims as Alpha men. It’s not because MRAs care about the safety of women.
Pecunium: Wait… you can’t do everything? The Magyk cards have lied to me!
David, you’re not the only one to see the connections between Breivik and the MRA with regard to their anti-feminist fears around cultural changes in gender roles:
A Tale of Two Terrorists Redux by Michael Kimmell at Sociological Images
johnnykaje, I’m sorry I insulted the KKK’s organizational skills.
GL Piggy: re Ami’s style.
I’m an English professor, and I love Ami’s writing style. Like any different set of conventions, it can take a while to get used to, but keep reading and you’ll become more Ami-literate which is all to the good.
Ohhhhh right. I forgot the rape/rape-rape distinction, and the thing about the poor omega male who can’t get any vs. some scary alpha dude lunging out of the shadows. Plus, the false rape accusations probably only apply … at convenient times, or something? (i.e., when someone is accusing a white guy of rape, and not when they’re accusing a non-white guy or a non-guy).
To tell the truth, I don’t really get why Muslim men are alpha men. Aren’t they just … guys who practice a common religion? Does it give them sekrit powers?!
well, it did result in Pat Buchanan, so maybe they had a point.
Hey, Pat Buchanan is Scots-Irish, just like Rev. Paisley. He’s Catholic because his mother was German Catholic.
“I think it is a forgone conclusion that Islam is a more hostile religion than any other that currently exists – both in principle and in deed. I shouldn’t have to mention 9/11, London, Madrid. So you can complain about a guy burning the Koran, but you won’t get much sympathy from me. ”
We’re not talking about a guy burning the Koran. We’re talking about guys who keep murdering people or trying to murder people based on their religious and political convictions who just happen to be a). white and b). of right-wing and social conservative/fundamentalist christian leanings. Like Timothy McVeigh. Or Eric Robert Rudolph. Or William Krar. We’re talking about how the goalposts keep moving so that one guy identifying as muslim shooting up a recruiting station and killing two people because of the conflict in the Middle East is “ZOMG MUSLIM TERRORIST VANGUARD!!” but another guy who comes up with a calculated plan to wipe out the next generation of people he feels are handing over his country to marxists and muslims and then manages to kill almost 90 people in one fell swoop is “Just some lone nut nobody agrees with”.
And the only foregone conclusion here is that you’re a racist trying to cover your bigotry with a veneer of respectability. Sorry pal, some of us realize that you lot have become very PR-conscious over the past 20 years or so and we still recognize the dog-whistle stuff when we hear it.
I was away from the internets for a long time, and I’m just catching up. There were a ton of comments in moderation, and I let them all through ….
including a really vile one from NWO that basically ends up suggesting that terrorism is the only option for MRAs.
I’m going to delete that part, but if you want to see what he said you should scroll up now and take a look before it’s gone.
He’s going to be on moderation for a long time.
Also, the piece linked to by ithiliana looks very interesting. Thanks!
NWO suggested that terrorism is the only option for MRAs? o_O
Wouldn’t it be more fair to include it (this isn’t me curious btw, which I AM, but I get why you removed it xD I’m not trying to trick you into it) so that ppl can see what he said, b/c I’m sure NWO is gonna accuse you of claiming he said something he didn’t, conveniently omitting it, etc etc -_-
I think it would be awesome if everyone on Manboobz started using nonstandard English! We’d lose 90% of our trolls overnight because they’d be too lazy to read what we wrote.
In honor of my Trekkie roots, vill from now on vrite posts in Chekovese. Vhere are nuclear wessels?
I will write everything in IPA. Or I will when I find the special character codes for WordPress.
@Johnny Pez:
“In honor of my Trekkie roots, vill from now on vrite posts in Chekovese. Vhere are nuclear wessels?”
Damn, now I have to see if I can find that website that can translate English into Jagermonster-speak from the Girl Genius webcomic.
Und Hy em successful in findink it!
Marc: You are being dishonest again (perhaps yet… I’m beginning to wonder if you know how to be honest): You were the one who said only 9 percent of rape cases lead to convictions.
But even that isn’t relevant to what I was saying. G.L. Piggy said all rapes in a given period, in a given place, were caused by a given population.
I found the stats which showed he was wrong.
Roman Candle: I spent a career (16 years, medically retired) in Human Intelligence. I’ve been trained Intelligence in Combatting Terrorism (yeah, the Army has great course titles).
If a save-the-planet group started talking about killing people, and publishing parts of the unabomber manifesto, I’d be worried.
When a group as large as the MRA is (at least a few thousand, in the US) starts to use violent rhetoric, when members of the group start looking at extreme events (Lepine, Sodoni, Ball) and saying they are the tip of the iceberg, and that if the gov’t doesn’t start to listen to them more events like that are going to happen.
I worry.
When someone carries out a violent act, which he says is supposed to be the catalyst for more violence, and uses the justifications of that very group as some of his foundational literature. I worry.
Because at that point the rhetoric is starting to become action. It may be one person here and another person there, but mighty oaks from little acorns grow. Mussolini was just a paid thug breaking farmers’ strikes in the 1920’s. Look where that ended up.
Funny how you all whine and complain that feminism isn’t a monolithic block, yet you take the broadest brush the local hareware store has to offer and paint all Christians with one quick stroke. Doesn’t 1 guy gunning down innocent people who happens to be a Christian mean 1 billion didn’t?
Every feminist must therefore be a mixture of Solanas and Daly; Vile atheists bent on murdering 90% of men and keeping the rest around as slaves?
Remember, if ya don’t want to be painted with the broad brush, don’t do it to others.
Apologies above post should have read of course
Logical fallacy there David Just because someone you consider to be a mad man and or a terrorist says something does not make it automatically incorrect, more likely to be well… mad I guess.and god knows plenty of apparently sane people in government have caused more deaths than this.
Ideas should be argued on their own merits not on their source.
Its policy when a politician does it crazy or terrorism when its amateur hour.