In June, a man named Thomas Ball took his own life – literally lighting himself ablaze – outside of a Keane, New Hampshire courthouse. He left behind a manifesto protesting his treatment by the family court.
But Ball wanted to do more than protest what he felt were injustices against men. He hoped to inspire other men to take the law into their own hands; in his words “we need to start burning down police stations and courthouses.”
He wasn’t speaking figuratively: he was talking about real violence.
[T]he dirty deeds are being carried out by our local police, prosecutors and judges. … Collaborators who are no different than the Vichy of France or the Quislings of Norway during the Second World War. … And they need to be held accountable. So burn them out. …
Ball went on to offer specific advice on how to construct the most effective Molotov cocktails to lob at courthouses and police stations.
Nor did he seem overly concerned that people would be killed:
There will be some casualties in this war. Some killed, some wounded, some captured. Some of them will be theirs. Some of the casualties will be ours. …
I only managed to get the main door of the Cheshire County Courthouse in Keene, NH. I would appreciate it if some of you boys would finish the job for me.
Ball has been treated as a martyr by many Men’s Right’s Activists online; his manifesto – including those parts that explicitly call for terrorism – has been reposted on a number of MRA sites.
Why am I bringing up Ball? This is why:
On Tuesday, an Arkansas man reportedly entered the office of the judge that had presided over his divorce and custody hearings, and opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle. Amazingly, no one died as a result of his rampage, aside from the gunman himself, James Ray Palmer, who was taken down by police in a gun battle outside the courthouse, according to news accounts. The judge, fortunately, was not there, and the gunman’s rifle apparently jammed. Before heading to the courthouse, authorities say, Palmer set his own home on fire with timed incendiary devices.
Was Palmer inspired directly by Ball’s manifesto? We don’t know. The judge in this case was by no means the first to be targeted by a man angry at the outcome of his divorce or custody case. Judges were receiving death threats – and in some cases actually being murdered – long before there was such a thing as the Men’s Rights movement online.
But talk of violence is common on Men’s Rights sites. Opponents of the Men’s Rights movement are denounced as “collaborators,” while others talk plainly about fighting a “war” against feminism. Angry Harry, a British MRA revered by many of his ideological compatriots on this side of the pond, has offered an explicit apologia for violence against family court judges.
Even if Palmer himself was not directly influenced by the MRM online—as of yet, we don’t know — it is only a matter of time until some unbalanced person steeped in the violent rhetoric of the MRM online decides to “finish the job” started by Thomas Ball. It is only a matter of time until those espousing such rhetoric have real blood on their hands.
If the MRM truly aspires to be a real civil rights movement, rather than a reactionary hate sect more redolent of the KKK than of MLK, moderate MRAs need to step up and speak out against the bullies and the would-be warriors. They need to stop canonizing violent-minded men like Ball. They need to make clear that violent rhetoric – not to mention specific threats or calls to terrorism – have no place in the movement.
Do I expect this to happen? No. I think instead we will get more excuses, more evasions, more apologias for violence — and more threatening talk.
I prefer Primetime Sports and Bob McCown 😀
Uhm, could you please name an existing feminist terrorist group? I must confess I have never heard of such organizations.
David Futrelle | September 17, 2011 at 7:39 pm
Catalogue, again, I didn’t say Palmer or Breivik were MRAs. Did you actually bother to read my posts, or did you just skim them and make a bunch of assumptions?
He didn’t read my blog and just made a giant assumption about it xD I think that answers your question xD
The Sisterhood of Evil Mutants!
Catalogue, is the False Rape Society a moderate blog in your view?
Catalogue: The context? You made a statement: MRAs who advocate violence are so few in number that talking about them as if they were at all representative is a slander against the 10s of 1,000s who are against it.
I challenged you to prove that this is a minority.
That’s the context. I’m not hair-splitting, I’m repeating myself.
Hell… for context, you are making apologia for violence in this thread.
David you never came out and said they were MRA, you inferred they were connected and your peanut gallery did the rest, as is the usual here.
Molly, FSR is what it is. Its pretty hard-line on false accusations and feminist rape misinformation and civil rights.
Vermin
Existing feminist terror groups …
Terrorist violence is more likely to be carried out by men than by women. Women’s roles with respect to terror groups used to be more often devoted to support, fund-raising, organising, public relations and political representation. With the rise of feminism, this is changing. The US American group, SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) and more recent all-women, feminist terror groups, such as those in Nepal, provide examples of changes in this area. Women are more likely to be members of left-wing terror groups and to espouse feminist ideology. There have been a higher proportion of women in Latin-American, German and Palestinian terror groups, than elsewhere. Women have been able to exploit their image of non-violence and weakness to escape detection and carry out terrorist activities.
http://web.mac.com/petermforster/Site/Psychology_of_terrorism.html
You might remember that one of Julian Assanges accusers was connected to a south american feminist terror group.
A south american feminist group threatened to castrate 21(?) american men if lorena bobbit went to jail …
MEK in the middle east is lead by a marxist feminist and supported by american feminist majority foundation. …http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2004/01/28/richard-perle-supports-terrorism/
“The MEK is a radical feminist organisation. Their leader believes that women should occupy all the leadership postitions in the resistance. This is refelcted in the current make-up of the organisation. The entire leadership council of the MEK as well as the NLO is comprised entirely of women. The President-elect of the organisation is a women Mrs Rajavi. Even though only 30% of the military resistance are women, women hold over two-thirds of the commander postions and command many all-male units. So the MEK seek to replace a male-dominated society in Iran, with one that actively discrimiantes against men. So rather than being progressive and for equal human-rights the MEK is as discrimiantory as any regime in the middle-east, if not worse because it currently masquerades as being democratic and fair. In reality the orgainsation discriminates against men.
Mrs. Rajavi must be greatly admired by American feminists. If you want to know what a feminist “utopia” would be like, this chilling article in the NY Times Magazine written by Elizabeth Rubin about MEK is probably right on the money.
http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/55689
There are many feminist terror groups, the feminist abuse industry was built on terrorizing the founder of the egalitarian DV movement taking her movement from her ..
So all this trying to slander the entire mens movement with terrorism, is just a tad hypocritical
You really think SCUM is current or ever was a group? You really aren’t that bright and certainly don’t read for comprehension.
Pecunium
Given that feminism has a long documented history of terrorism and the men’s movement has no such history outside of Manboobz conjecture.
And that feminism has a documented history of defending and hiding female abusers and murderers. You are in no position to demand proof that the mens movement does not conform to your BS misandrist tropes and stereotypes,
Catalogue, you are too delusional to have a real argument with.
Helkel
The man that wrote the paper on terrorism thinks SCUM was an active terror group, not me. The reading comprehension failure is on your part. And don’t shoot the messenger. Feminist terror groups exist. MRAs terror groups don’t.
@catalogue,
Not seeing the link between the Feminist Majority and the MEK. The link on the site you linked to just led to an announcement for a panel discussion on human rights in Iran, sponsored by FM–no mention of MEK.
If the MRA ever got off their asses long enough to organize, they’d probably make some terrorist groups instead of just bitching on the Internet. But that would take effort, so they won’t.
Catalogue: Given that you refuse to answer the questions you posed, you are in no position to say anyone is asking unwarranted questions.
Wow… that was easy.
But, as you made the allegation, and can’t defend it we can ignore you, as admitting (by default) your defeat; in accord with the principles of Logic 101 (which you invoked with the allegations of fallacy): Silence = assent.
Y’know, his bizarre syntax and his belaboring of the same point over and over again remind me of Samuel.
Catalogue: Please, provide some citations to back up your… assumptions.
He named the Angry Brigade, whom threatened a particular feminist with death threats. Unlike him, I do not approve of violence, however. As to organized MRA terrorists… there are, but I’m afraid I can’t say more on the matter here. Though I will say you’re pathetically blind.
Catalogue: I generally don’t read links provided by those who shit up the joint.
And learn to spell my name, it’s not hard.
Hi David, thats quite a charge, to say I am mentally deranged
Tell me what you think Im imagining.
Feminist abuse denial, feminist terror groups, feminists terrorizing the founder of the egalitarian DV movement and making it into the discriminatory movement is today, feminist advocacy for female child and spousal murderers?
And Ill post evidence…. Andrea Yeates, battered wife’s syndrome, MEK, Erin Pizzy, Dr Straus’s papers on systematic abuse denial by the feminist movement …. you know its all there.
as opposed to your slander and conjecture.
Did SCUM actually have any members other than Valerie Solanis?
Nope, it was just her manifesto.
Are you trying to suggest that Andrea Yates got off because of battered wife syndrome? Seriously, I can’t tell, because your posting style is so convoluted. Because she didn’t, if that’s what you’re trying to claim. She suffered from postpartum psychosis, and she had a long medical history documenting her mental illness. It’s not like she drowned her children and the feminists swooped in to excuse her crime.
MEK is a Marxist terrorist organization that also supports equal rights for men and women. Al-Qaeda is an Islamisist terrorist organization that denies equal rights for women. It makes about as much sense to blame feminism for the MEK as it does to blame patriachists like the MRM for Al-Qaeda.
Nope, the PPD defence and battered womens defense are two different kinds of family murderer advocacy. Feminism also actively protects female abusers with convoluted studies.
Point being, all this slandering of the mens movement is pretty outlandish, when you look at feminism’s track record.
If there is an abusers lobby its feminism, if there is a lobby for equal rights and treatment for abusers and victims, its the mens movement.
I don’t recall the feminist rallies for Andrea Yates. Probably because they didn’t happen.