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.
Hi Voip
Correcting spellings on an internet forum is just another fallacy based debate.
I wasn’t going to do it until I saw you’d edited your post…and fucked that up too. ~^_^
Hi Voip
You like to tell lies don’t you?
“Oh, I hole other feminists to the “don’t shoot people” standard as well. It’s a great standard, except that your dudes seem to be finding it hard to meet.”
Yes Voip, thats right 10s of 1000s of the mra’s approve of the terrorism in Norway, the whole movement have come out in support of this right winger.
I’ll make an equally silly but stronger arguement, “All feminists support shooting people because valerie solanas”
My argument is stronger than your because VS actually self identified as a fem. and has significant support in feminism where are the guy in norway doesnt qualify for either standard.
Enjoy your fallacy based anti mens rights “movement”.
Anyhow.
I’m done with manboobz fallacies for the day and I want to leave before the dog piling starts.
You can go back to talking about the statistically irrelevant number of mra’s you use to slander the other 10s if not 100s of 1000s with.
Enjoy your fallacy based “movement”.
NWO said: LGBTQ has added an “I” in some instances. Does that stand for incestuous relationships?
I, I just… ROFL. INTERSEX, NWO. INTERSEX. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
But of course, it’s the filthy commie Bilderberger-group-and-lizard-people-who-married-into-the-Rothschilds-funded feminists that made you go right to the hot, steamy, godless kin-on-kin imagery from a simple letter, right? Right?
No True Scotsman and flounce.
Anyone got a link to an MRA condemning violence against family court judges (or women, or any of the MRM’s enemies)? Because that would actually start to refute the OP.
Ohhh, a flounce already!
Bye Catalogue!
Don’t let the door hit you etc.
Okay, who is up for betting on how long it will take them to return?
paniorpa:
No, the real question is why this guy thought that using violence was in any way was an appropriate reaction to something he caused. And why he didn’t understand that his ex-wife filed the divorce and got custody because he was abusive and dangerous (and attempting to kill the people who were involved in it is pretty good evidence for that).
Ack, dammit, there is one “was” too much in my post, sorry about that!
zhinxy:
Pfffff, it kinda says a lot about NWO , does it not?
Yet another one of Captain Bathrobe’s predictions have come true. He foresaw that an MRA would bring up Valerie Solanis to try to justify the Arkansas gunman’s rampage. Catalogue called it an equally silly argument, but I think he wouldn’t want to bring up her name except to say, “Yeah, well if any feminist is violent then you can’t criticize violent MRA’s”. Captain Bathrobe, now I know you are a real psychic. What are the winning lotto numbers for the next week?
I had a fallacy-based “movement” the other day. It looked just like a little man made of straw.
Notice that Maggie is not actually defending them by saying “No, they all supported religious liberty, they didn’t want black people enslaved, they thought women were people, and that the poor should get to vote. They didn’t get pushed to war because they weren’t permitted to exterminate Indians either”. That would require her to do some actual research, and once again, the facts aren’t on her side. She’s just gonna tell r/mr on us.
This *IS* your history, you uneducated twit. What you were taught in grade school simply isn’t true. The founders ultimately were not super nice people who all wanted sunshine and butterflies. They *HATED* the poor and mob rule; the Electoral College was set up specifically to prevent the common people from getting a vote for president. The whole point was to trigger senate elections every time, and they didn’t foresee political parties in this. They were predominantly fine with state laws that required a property requirement before voting. That’s another anti-poor measure. The fact that they thought black people should be enslaved is in the record for us all to see: Two of the most famous were themselves slaveowners who didn’t release their bonds until death. Blacks were kept enslaved. Not considering women people? Did you see them with the vote prior to the 1900s? Yes, but only for state/municipal elections in some states (It was maintained, then removed, then put back in in a limited fashion, then required nationally)
Patrick Henry and a number of other founders HATED the constitution. The right to religious freedom was considered an abomination to our duty to God. I notice owlslave has a few quotes that come from Wallbuilders, who like to pretend these guys were the majority. Theocracy was the way to go to these guys. Now, unlike the other awful positions, these guys were enough in the minority to pass the constitution without them, but the simple fact of the matter is that it was a very significant minority just the same. Learn about something before you talk about it, Maggie, for fuck’s sake. The founding fathers may have written interesting tracts on liberty, but they were indeed racist, genocidal, sexist, and classist assholes.
Whatever they’d say about Kimmel would not come anywhere near the force of horrible things they’d have to say about you, Mags, because you are a sex worker. I’m not sure whether they’d hate you or me more, seeing as I’m brown and for their purposes, an indian. I could care less what the founding fathers would have to say about Kimmel (Which, by the way, keep on not knowing what sociology is, it’s hilarious). I care about the fact that they thought the genocide of indians was okay, that women weren’t people, that black people could be enslaved and it still counts as a republic that values liberty, and that the poor not getting a vote at all was an acceptable level of representation.
Mags, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I saw your post on sociology. I had it piped through a sociology department. We all laughed at you. You’re a clueless twit who wishes she knew what science was. You don’t understand how to actually look at empirical data. You’re just a stupid fool who wants to slander folks because reality has a feminist bias.
The women, the poor, and black people. That’s *the majority* of the population. I really can’t stress this enough.
Every time you guys say this, you only ever bring up property destruction. Property destruction is not terrorism. It’s vandalism. And I’m perfectly fine with vandalism.
No, it isn’t. It would be an ad hominem to say your poor spelling means you are incorrect, but she’s *ONLY* correcting spelling. That is a service to you, and nothing more.
TSTKTS.
Bionic Mommy:
I’ll be getting a 900 number for you to call shortly. 🙂
Seriously, though, predicting that MRAs will trot out their usual tropes requires only the ability to predict that the sun will come up every morning.
magdelyn im a con law geek so i actually do spend a lot of my school time thinking about what the founding fathers said and did, and if you think that slavishly fawning over them without any acknowledgment of their real and myriad flaws is somehow ‘intellectual’, you have a broken definition of intellectual
Ah, motherfucker, got my many adams’ mixed up. IT’s Adam Smith who’s grave could power a few houses when free marketeers quote him. It figures. Nonetheless, trufax these are. Read The Wealth of Nations if you want a wake up call on just what the dude thought about an unfettered class of rich people. Spoiler Alert: He didn’t think it’d be a good idea.
Doesn’t mean he’d be for all the regulation that *is* a good idea, but I really just find it hilarious that he’s quoted for positions he outright reprimanded in his works.
Well, I have too much self respect to use the terms “lulz” or “derping”. Nor apparently much for the truth, because even in the worst of cycles regular blanket parties don’t happen.
To say nothing of being able to slip into one’s rack boots in an open bay; when everyone is looking out the corners of their eyes at the victim.
So, even if you were in the Corps, I don’t believe this description of your training*.
Then again, I don’t beleive you were in the Corps, because you don’t use the right language to describe it. You talk about it the way someone who was never in talks about it, with the language of The Army, as learned in movies, and your description of blanket parties is at odds with how they happen.
The entire post you linked to is also a trope, the one of the brutalising military, and the rampant violence it uses to manufacture conformity. Maybe, in a conscript army, but in 1988? When the entire DoD had been volunteer for 16 years? When the Marine Corps had already had several scandals before about trainee abuse?
But hey… you’re tough, keep it up.
*Feel free to tell me how many Drills you had, who played what role, how long Basic lasted, where you did follow on training, how much time you spent in the fleet, how many racks were stacked; and the size/location of your footlockers, etc. It’s not impossible you were in, but this vignette, given your other attitudes and proclivities isn’t all that believable.
Catalogue: You are conflating very different things. Nice try, no biscuit.
1: You are horrified that there is not a massive, and never ending outcry about singular acts of violence, from feminists.
2: You are annoyed that when large parts of one group call for specific types of violence, and fellow travellers of that group perpetrate it we make a connection.
Then you have this inane shit: Correcting spellings on an internet forum is just another fallacy based debate.
It’s not. It’s mockery. It’s insult. (it’s not ad hominem, as the attacks on your logic weren’t based on, “you can’t spell, ergo you can’t think. I’m not the best typist, but that’s got not a thing to do with my content; save the ocasions I have a case/tense error which is too hard to suss out, and I have to clarify).
Your “movement” here, which is basically a group of smug, sarcastic nerds that slander, bully and dog pile on line* – is in its entirety based on slandering 10s of 1000s of people based on what a statically irrelevant number say and taking others out of context while not holing your own group to the same standards.
Ok, prove it. If the people whom we make fun of are “statistically irrelevant”, prove it. If the are so statistically irrelevant there must be 10s of 1000s of people out there saying there is never any call for violence. People who are actively calling out (before the acts of violence, not “wait, no one really meant it” afterwards). Those people, those tens of thousands ought to be really damned easy to find.
So we must be really stupid, or really blinkered, because we’ve looked.
But hey, you seem to know where they are, please share with the rest class.
*and with nothing more than that feminists have, to hear the MRA tell it, taken over the halls of power, and the wheels of justice. For your sake you’d better hope we never actually try to get things done.
Paniorpa: So it’s the fault of feminists that a guy who told his people he was, “going to hunt two legged” before his divorce even started went on a revenge spree.
The poor despairing man.
You’re a fool. A sanctimonious fool, blaming all feminists for this nutter going on a spree. Saying it’s got nothing to do with MRAs saying “shooting judges will stop the evil of men losing their kids/having to pay child support”.
Nope. That has nothing to do with it. It’s all those upptity wimmenz asking for restraining orders against men who say they want to kill people.
The “founding fathers” were a group of humans, of a particular time, place, and class. Some of them were more of assholes than others. What they were not were perfect little angels or a cohesive unit that agreed on everything. It does not take more than the most superficial study of early US history to figure that out. And ignoring the slavery, genocide, etc. perpetrated by many of these men is apologism for some of the worst things imaginable. George Washington, for example, made his wealth off of enslaving other human beings, and his reputation off of genocide. The vast majority of these men were only concerned about their own interests and the interests of men of their class. That’s why the constitution had to wait almost a hundred years to have a clause guaranteeing equality under the law but had a clause about escaped slaves being forcibly returned to slave states from the get go. One of the real tradgedies of cases like Dred Scott were that they were not techinically wrongly decided as a matter of law, because the law was written by those who were patently against large swaths of human rights when it came to anyone but themselves.
Also, magedlyn, you don’t know shit about me and mine, so your ad hominem attacks about income class just show how much of an ignorant asshole you are.
‘Scuse me while I whip this out…
http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0684818868
Tha’s ah mighty purdy straw fem’nist ya got thar. Ah-yup.
IM sure UR home skoolz is soooooo much better LOLZ!
NOOB! lol PWND!
Holy crap, NWO, you’re creating a perfect storm of stupid. Every single time I think you might have reached the absolute possible limit of human dumbfuckery, you exceed it. I suppose I should be impressed, but you’re just sad.
Does pulling ‘facts’ like this out of your ass ever get painful?
“So we must be really stupid, or really blinkered..”
Well its the latter, you are willfully obtuse.
And I was conflating two things that are the same.
A group of small group of RL social rejects here and another group of RL social rejects on MGTOW that use the same fallacious argument and double standards against each others groups.
The people here cannot see that, the MGTOW types prolly cannot either because they are both inside the same cave, but from the outside looking in, its hilarious.
Catalogue. It’s very simple to prove your point. Find the part of the manosphere that does not accept violence. Do a basic content analysis. Show numbers. It really isn’t that hard.
Until then, you are blowing hot air.
Only two things are ever found in the middle of the road, dotted lines and possums. I love “centrist” because they so rarely are.
Who the fuck is Michael Kimmel?
“I’m certainly not ashamed to say I love my country, respect the Founding Fathers, and laugh at all the little feminists, whose fathers paid for university and a trip to Paris, pissing on our collective histoire. You go girl!!!”
Damn, and here I’ve been paying for my college education *by myself* all this time. Where did I go wrong as a feminist?