Today, in the Men’s Rights subreddit, we find Demonspawn, a long-time fixture in Reddit’s MRA circles, getting dozens of upvotes for a comment in which he advocates murdering family court judges and other government officials:
Demonspawn is responding to a post from Robert Franklin on Fathers and Families about Dan Brewington, “[a]n Indiana man fac[ing] five years in prison because he criticized the judge and the custody evaluator in his divorce and custody case.”
Or at least that’s how Franklin wants to frame the issue. While conceding that Brewington “often used intemperate language” on his blog, Franklin downplays what seems to have been a relentless four-year harassment campaign from the troubled father. According to a report on the case on the Eagle Country Online website:
[P]rosecutors argued that Brewington took his postings beyond being critical of the court system. They became personal against anybody who became involved with his case.
“This was sick revenge dragging my wife and kids into the matter,” Humphrey said during his testimony. “I don’t know of many cases where a subject has more clearly expressed his intent to do harm.” …
Brewington … called [custody evaluator Edward] Connor a child molester and prostitute in his “Internet rampage,” contacted the Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky where Conner is involved as a board member, and sending mass e-mails to Connor’s colleagues and legal professional around the area. …
Connor’s wife, Dr. Sara Jones-Connor, reaffirmed what her husband shared with the judge.
“For over four years we have dealt with his attacks on a daily basis,” Jones-Conner said.
And Franklin leaves out the most serious of the accusations against Brewington: that he threatened to murder the judge.
Brewington’s cellmate at the Dearborn County Law Enforcement Center for two-and-a-half months, Joseph McCaleb, had sent a letter to jail officials on September 25 after being concerned with what he heard from Brewington.
“He talked about following (Judge Humphrey) home, shooting him, and dumping him in the river,” McCaleb said of Brewington’s alleged “detailed and thought out” plan.
I should note that after testifying that Brewington’s threats seemed serious, McCaleb later concluded that they weren’t; and Judge Brian Hill did not take his testimony into consideration when sentencing Brewington.
Was Brewington’s sentence fair? I don’t know. But Franklin’s posting was misleading, to say the least, if not dishonest. And while a few people raised questions about it, no one on the Men’s Rights subreddit bothered to spend the two minutes on Google that would have turned up the story I’ve been quoting from, instead relying entirely on Franklin’s, er, incomplete account.
Whether or not Brewington’s threats were sincere, Franklin’s post had Demonspawn and many others on the Men’s Rights subreddit thinking violent thoughts themselves. Here are some more selections from the discussion there. Note that every single violent comment I quote below got upvotes from the regulars.
Here, Boss_Money invokes the memory of Tom Ball, who killed himself in hopes that his dramatic suicide would encourage other MRAs to start firebombing courthouses and police stations:
Later in that same thread, coldacid suggests that suicide is a much less effective strategy than murder:
Anxdiety, meanwhile, shares his fantasies of violent “retribution.”
Boss_Monkey returns with a miniature manifesto for armed revolution:
And whats_up_doc suggests that violence may be the only solution:
The Men’s Rights subreddit is by and large the most “moderate” of all the major Men’s Rights forums online. But this is the language, and the thinking, of a hate movement. Anyone who really cares about improving life for men needs to call this kind of thing out, and make clear that it is completely unacceptable in any rights movement worthy of the name.
Wait, so this Brewington fellow falsely accused another man (the custody evaluator) of sex crimes? Should the MRA’s be demanding he spend even more time in prison?
These divorced guys never talk about how much they miss their children and miss watching them grow up. No, it’s just about them, their “battling the darkness” and “raw hatred” and yada.
Yup, the MRM is totally non-violent and not a hate movement at all. Tell me another one.
Can we call them cr**py yet?
No no no false accusations are only bad when women make them. Because… uh… some super rational reason I’m sure.
Yeah for people who are pissed because they can’t see their kids, you don’t hear much about their, you know, kids. If it bothered them that much, wouldn’t they talk about it? But no, it’s always about the ex wife whore that got one over on them, with the help of evil courts and suchlike. And we’re supposed to feel compassion for these poor souls who clearly are great parenting material.
It is so terribly ironic that AVfM posted this (more unintelligible than usual*) JtO screed today, describing the MRM as:
Agent Orange is doxxing all these redditors as we speak, right?
*Seriously, there were paragraphs in there that were just kind of word salad. I think he mentioned a camp with no legs at one point. And he appears to think that the words “principle” and “principal” are interchangeable. I just…
In better news, the kittens are back and Mom’s feeding them:
http://www.ustream.tv/sevenkittens
Kittens! I need a lot of palate cleansing after this week.
My boyfriend’s dad is a federal judge. He mostly does civil cases, but I still worry.
Welp.
Aww, the kittens are getting so big! The gray one can’t find a nipple, so he’s getting a bath instead. Not sure that’s a good tradeoff though.
VoIP, who thought that there would come a day when being a family court or civil court judge was a dangerous occupation?
John the Other said:
Hey, you might just be on to something here…
My mom used to work in the Seattle Federal building — 35 stories, multiple agencies, lots of bomb threats (I was glad she left for another job, especially after the Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed).
It’s almost as though everything JtO says can be turned around and used against him. Hmm…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-k5J4RxQdE
Back to the post, though, I just can’t imagine why anyone thinks the MRM is violent. Nope. It’s not as though they have prominent members calling sexually exploited children prostitutes, or talking casually about killing judges, judges’ families, ex-wives, etc. It’s inexplicable!
Why do these men always seem so surprised that their ex-wives and ex-partners move heaven and earth to make sure that the kids don’t get to go live with daddy?
These men always make it seem like they are innocent victims. The go on and on on these sites about how their wives left them because of feminism and took the kids away and the courts gave her custody. They always leave out the abuse, whether verbal or physical, they probably subjected their wives to on a daily basis. She finally realized her options weren’t stay or leave and starve, but that she could leave and find support from the courts. The police could protect her when her husband bangs on her door and three in the morning calling her a whore because she left him. But no, in their minds the woman is never justified in leaving the man. She should stay in the marriage and tolerate the abuse, otherwise she’s a whore. No, wait, either way she’s a whore, but she’s supposed to like it, god damnit.
And I was just starting to get over the child-rape apologist, now I have to go and unrustle my jimmies all over again.
The guy who set himself on fire obviously was NOT a stable parent.
Boss Monkey’s soaring rhetoric made me chuckle. How about they start out with some peaceful protests? Or are they worried they’d be ignored because MRAs are a very tiny minority that no one takes seriously?
Can we call them cr**py yet?
Yes, to both creepy and crappy.
Creapy? We could roll “creationist” in too that way.
It totally weirds me out that Ruby continues to post here. I can’t figure out her line of thought at all.
She refuses to be ‘bullied’ out of a place that hates her and thinks she’s scum because they’re ‘radical communist feminists’, more or less.
And christ. I keep saying “Father’s Rights Advocates are only reasonable in comparison, they don’t interact with reality at any point”. Will it actually stick when the dude is trying to cover an extended harrassment campaign? Because I mean, the lies and misrepresentation about custody of children should have been sufficient.
What I think is weird is we have NWO, and Tom Martin, but Ruby can’t post here? I am really sick of these endless comments about how Ruby should not post here. They don’t make any sense. No single poster here owns who can post, let alone a group of you. I know Ruby likes prison rape. I get that. I don’t get the “we don’t want you posting here” stuff in her case.
Crispy! We can call them crispy as in this shit’s so old, it’s gotten crispy. Or crampy, like when all this has given me a cramp. Or, we could just say creepy, because that’s what it is.
Because her, “Come on guys, I’m on your side!” routine is dishonest and creepy, given what we know of her. And I’d like to see Martin and NWO thrown out on their asses as well, personally.
I have checked and I have yet to see a newsarticle of a woman killing her children, ex, innocent bystanders and/or threatening a judge.
I am sure it has happened but every one I look for says “a man” “ex-husband” “father of” in these mass killings (there are scattered reports of women seeking to kill an ex-husband but I have not seen them seeking to kill their children when there is a custody dispute.)