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.
If NWO isn’t a very motivated troll, he really needs psychological help…
NWO lives in a world where terrorizing your wife and child isn’t tyranny, but trying to stop someone from doing so is basically colonial oppression.
He’s a charming little motherfucker, ain’t he?
I imagine they were, and I imagine they would. They died 200 years ago. What’s the MRA’s excuse?
Yeah, that was weird even by Slavey’s standards.
And NWO explains why I’m a Feminist: The only way tyranny can succeed is for good men to do nothing. It is not only the right, but the duty of every citizen to overthrow a tyrannical government.
Just substitute a little bit about, force being a last resort; and something which requires both a consensus, and the laying out of grievances and having them not be heard, while swaping patriarchy for tyrannical gov’t.
But it is nice to see him agreeing with me on the need for feminism.
Who gives a fuck what the founding fathers would say now? They were primarily middle to upper class white dudes who thought black people should be property, that the poor shouldn’t get a vote, and that women weren’t really people. A significant faction of them refused to approve of the Constitution because it would guarantee freedom of religion to all citizens. And quite frankly, the thing that raised their hackles the most was being told the English weren’t going to help them exterminate Indians that were sitting in ‘their’ land (That is to say, the land that they kicked Indians into after claiming their ancestral grounds). They’re lionized, the number of fucks we should give about their opinions on liberty overinflated.
We could probably stand to hook John Adams’ grave up to a generator though. Every time a Free Marketeer quotes him, 20 kilowatts are generated from the spinning.
The “Founding Father’s” were a bunch of sexist, racist, genocidal terrorists.
True story, bro!
The “Founding Father’s” were a bunch of sexist, racist, genocidal terrorists.
Huh. So are the current crop.
Tradition!
I wasn’t saying we should care what they would think, I was simply snarking.
I figured, since you pointed out that they were probably assholes. You would be correct. But NWO and so many other americans think they’re just saintly. Even though they’d probably hate them too, if they had the tiniest idea what the founding fathers would think back about *them*.
“Founding Fathers” worship is rather silly. Have a quick fun look over the Jeffersonian vs Federalist battles over seditious libel, they could be nasty petty little a-holes. (Jefferson and Adams went years without speaking because Jefferson was accused of paying journalists to print nasty personal attacks on Adams) Not to mention that two of the men quoted actually enslaved hundreds of other human beings, one of whom raped some of them.
Also, have you ever read anything by Abigail Adams? John Adams was fine being married to a hardass intellectual woman who advocated women’s rights.
“Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.” -Abigail Adams
Outside the slavery issue, I think the founders did a good job on most of the Constitution.
2nd Amendment could have used some clarity Someone build a time machine to show them an AK-47 so they fix it.
However they were men-not Gods.
I believe today’s internet is awarded to Captain Bathrobe, for so accurately describing Slaver’s quote-comment.
Thank you! I shall keep it in my place of honor, next to the blue ribbon I won in a miniatures painting contest at the age of 12.
PFKAE: Let’s not go there. I’ve done that conversation to death. No one likes my positions. :>
PfkaE: We know what they thought about the second amendment. The founding fathers envisioned the militias as being, if necessary, the military rebels if the government was too tyrannical. The guns weren’t supposed to just hang around wherever people could afford them in the hands of any idiot. These are the same people who denied the vote to the poor because mob rule was no better than autocracy, in their view; you think they thought these same idiots should have free access to firearms? What they wrote isn’t *legally* clear, but what they wanted is totally a different matter.
I’d have to say that in fairness, we’d need to show them that the militias are now more or less reservist wings, not the same militias they envisioned. Of course,t hey also seemed to think that rebellions against a ‘tyrannical dictator’ in the name of democracy would turn out well. What we should *really* show them is in depth documentaries on the history of South and Central America!
Edit for clarity: They *DID* also want those self same idiots to actually have at least some guns. And guns that would militarily be useful. Just not unfettered and with absolutely no concept of accountability.
Nah, NWO can’t be a motherfucker … I’m pretty sure not even his own mother would want to be that close to him. Maybe spoonfucker or canoefucker or frozenyogurtfucker.
I am okay with taking a generator and showing them some of the awesome stuff that they helped create…then we should show them all the negatives…then more positives.
And Pecunium, I just would rather have it pretty clear…although considering Crush’s ability to twist words…maybe there is no way to be absolutely clear.
I’m so glad nobody was killed o_o; That sounds scary D:
Annnnddd as usual, NWO responds to tragedy by talking about how violent revolution is good. And then when Holly accuses him of supporting this, NWO and other MRAs will point to her and say she’s extrapolating evil things onto NWO b/c she’s a bigot, and NWO is a kind-hearted soul xD
I think it’s a game to a lot of them. They’re like kids who figure they could be commandos because they’re so good at Call Of Duty. I don’t think they have the personal experience to know what violence is really like (or even, on some level, to understand that it really happens), so they toss out violent scenarios like a kid going “and then I’d totally use my grenades KAPOW on all the teachers and then I’d never have study hall again!”
That’s exactly it : It’s real to them, in that their anger is real and they prolly do believe the reality they’ve constructed where they’re the most oppressed group evar and etc etc…. but so much of it is is like a game too :
Beth: The devil is in the details. Rutee has summed up a lot of the intent, and there is a lot of study on the underlying principles (and the ways in which things diverged in England and the US, some of which had to do with being an Island, some of which had to do with Scotland, and a lot of which had to do with the use of the Army as domestic “peacekeepers”.
The amendment is pretty clear. What’s murky is the caselase. The Supreme Court went from Miller v Texas*, in 1931 (which is an interesting holding; the grounds for which a local jurisdiction may inhibit private ownership of a weapon is when it has no military application), to the recent case about DC without actually granting cert to any 2nd Amendment issue, in effect creating 9 different sets of caselaw; and with some very divergent interpretations/understandings of Miller.
I really could go on for quite some time, about what the laws say, what the Federalist Papers say, what the common understanding was at the time, what the present effect of that understanding being put into practice; the ways in which the individual states make putting the founders understandings into practice illegal, what would happen in the event of an actual insurrection (from a purely theoretical viewpoint: related to tactics and ability, not outcome. Outcome has more to do with politics than it would with tactics/equipment).
The short answer is, there is no short answer.
*Miller v Texas was about the right of a state to ban sawed off shotguns. Miller was not represented. The court (with only Texas, defending the statute being heard) was told sawed-off shotguns were not used in the military.
I am sure you have spoken to just one Republican right? They say it is clear that you have the right to have every kind of gun known to man and one actually admitted to me he though that people should be allowed to own nukes.
*rolls eyes* It is clear to me but not clear in the caselaw.
My opinion on the 2nd Amendment is the resistance to regulation. There is a strong current in the US to resist all reasonable and rational regulation. Any proscription is immediately countered with a vast outcry of Slippery Slope fallacies that are amplified by the media who are mostly owned or invested in the Military/Industrial Complex.
But as Pecunium, notes, it’s a long and drawn out conversation.
Nah, NWO can’t be a motherfucker … I’m pretty sure not even his own mother would want to be that close to him. Maybe spoonfucker or canoefucker or frozenyogurtfucker.
Fruit Fucker 2000
The dudes who wrote the constitution did not mean for it to apply to women, so it’s hard for me to say anything positive about it, or them, at all.
not sure this format will work here–if not my apologies! (no preview button!)
Couch on fire, you say?
Time Out/Couch on Fire