NOTE: Man Boobz Pledge Week Continues! Big thanks to everyone who has donated!
If you haven’t yet, and want to, here’s the button you’re looking for:
UPDATE: AVFM has taken the post down.
Men’s Rights Activists have had a serious hate-on for the Southern Poverty Law Center ever since the hate-group-monitoring watchdog wrote about the misogyny in the Men’s Rights movement last spring.
Since the SPLC devotes its time to ferreting out bigots and exposing them to the world, this has put SPLC-hating MRAs in some interesting company. While not everyone who’s criticized the SPLC is a bigot – both Harper’s magazine and the Nation have been critical of the group and its fundraising methods – many of the most virulent critics of the SPLC are far-right racists. On Reddit, for example, the anti-SPLC subreddit, called simply SPLC, is dominated by white nationalists; indeed, at the moment, one of the top links on its front page is titled “Interest for White Student Union grows.”
You would think that MRAs trying to portray their movement as something other than a hate movement would try to disassociate themselves from those blatantly preaching racism. But some MRAs seem unperturbed to find themselves in the company of allies like this.
A case in point: A Voice for Men, which has just republished an anti-SPLC post by Pamela Geller, a far-right racist whose virulent Islamophobia made her Norwegian terrorist mass murderer Anders Breivik’s favorite English-language blogger, and whose latest provocation involves subway ads implying that Muslims are “savages.”
The opening sentences of her post (which can also be found on her blog) will give you some idea of Geller’s style:
The communists over at the Southern Poverty Law Center are among the gravest threats to freedom in the United States … The enemedia eagerly laps up and repeats their designation of pro-freedom groups as “hate groups,” and uses this designation as a propaganda tool to demonize and discredit us.
You may also recall the weasel-worded not-quite-justification for Breivik’s rampage she published on her blog shortly after the murders, describing the victims as
the future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives, including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole… all done without the consent of the Norwegians.
Next to a picture of camp attendees taken before the massacre, she wrote
Note the faces which are more Middle Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian
She later removed this bit, but you can see it screencapped here.
For more on Geller and her odious ideas and actions, see this profile from, yep, the SPLC and this piece in Slate. Heck, in the wake of her “savage” ad campaign, even Fox News is beginning to distance itself from her.
Geller’s post is getting a similarly chilly reception in the Men’s Rights subreddit – and even some of the AVFM regulars are put off by her extreme Islamophobia.
But for AVFM head honcho Paul Elam, it looks like any enemy of his enemy is a friend, so long as they’re angry enough about it.
Indeed, it seems as though Elam read Geller’s post so carelessly that he didn’t even notice that the bulk of it was actually a quotation of an SPLC “expose” by James Simpson of the right-wing Capital Research Center. Apparently a quick skim of a blog post and a glance at the rest of her blog was all the “due diligence” AVFM did before climbing into bed with this particular political bedfellow.
Hey now, I don’t think that’s a very fair assessment of the MRM.
You’re forgetting about their strongbelief that most rape victims are liars, and the once who were raped still deserved it for dressing like sluts.
I liked the one comment on the AVFM response to Geller about how communism is the same as Nazism. Not trying to minimize or defend what the soviets did, but as far as i know there’s nothing about the basic theory of communism as written by Marx that mandates “concentration camps” or hatred for anyone except maybe the upper class. Whereas in fascism/Nazism there is typically a strong emphasis, directly in the movement’s theory, on cultural homogeneity and race/ethnicity/religion/sexuality/ability – based “purity.” So although they ended up doing similar bad things, communism and nazism are not the same thing, or even comparable in their levels of hatred, at all.
Sorry, totally a non-sequitur, it just drives me nuts when people say that.
@Sir Bodsworth – bold fashion statements? Or abstract art?
@cloudiah, by coincidence, I just looked at that a few minutes ago. Who the heck even is Johann the Cabbie? He seems to be mostly a travel and occasional weed blogger. Oh, and atheism. Aside from the whole “daring to disagree with Paul Elam” thing, he seems perfect for AVFM.
I rarely feel inspired towards violence against someone, but I feel as if I want to bash these people over the head with a croquet mallet to knock some sense into them. Of course I wouldn’t actually do it, as that would be assault, kind of a dick move, illegal on all counts, and nowhere near the slapstick value it has in my head. But the sentiment is still there, I hope horrendously inconvenient things happen to this woman throughout her life. And on top of that, I hope she gets a cold far far worse than the already dreadful one I have….and strep throat, at the same time as the cold, and just as she feels she’s getting over it… BAM, mild but severely annoying influenza. And then when she’s going to get water to help break up the mucous in her esophagus, I hope she steps on a whole bunch of legos on the way.
I’m a fan of this response to Geller’s ads:
Let’s check out the free speech:
Paul Elam publishes a noxious piece at this website, and in the comments, he’s getting pretty thoroughly trashed for that. (He’s also getting trashed at /r/mensrights/). But near as we can tell Elam hasn’t banned anyone for disagreeing with him.
Then of course there is the case of David Futrelle….
Throughout all of this, there’s a reasonable chance David, that your terrible research, your bias, your cherry picking et. al., picked up and spread by Arthur Goldwag is helping to make more prominent the criticisms of the SPLC in Harpers Magazine by Ken Silverstein.
What’s really interesting, all you folks that like to pile on me, click here: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Southern_Poverty_Law_Center
The sourcewatch’s criticism component in the entry on the SPLC is far far longer than what they have to say about the good the SPLC is doing.
It maybe that the SPLC is undoing itself, and if so, that will be a terrible legacy for the good they have done in the past, and it’s shameful that David Futrelle has participated in their undoing by spreading some of the shoddiest journalistic efforts around and egging them on in their excesses.
Oh well.
Easy to point fingers and much much harder to accept that your side is full of hate Boring Troll.
@tulgey- that was beautiful. thank you.
*2 billion headdesks*
Fuck fuck fuck! why the hell did I write Paula?
Yeah, I meant Pamela.
*saunters off depressed and rather dazed…*
Is that blood? Ooh! Look at the pretty birds! They’re singing!
…
…
*walks into glass door*
*goes to sleep*
@someguy, You are pretty noxious. Why haven’t you been banned here? Can you imagine AVfM tolerating the feminist equivalent of NWOslave? Wow, it appears that Man Boobz is actually more tolerant of dissent than AVfM.
So, someguy, defend Geller or GTFO.
He threatened to ban you because you are incredibly tedious, some guy, not because he can’t handle the truth bombs you’ve been dropping. Hate to break it to ya.
Oh, Lordy.
Worst.
Troll.
Ever.
That youtube thing was awesome, though.
Yes, Boring Stick, we’re aware that you have a hate-on for David, what does that have to do with free speech?
Free speech means you never ever have to justify anything you say or publish, and if anybody takes you to task for something you say or publish, then they’re big meanies.
So according to Pam Geller, Norway’s social democratic party floods the country with muslims without the consent of the Norwegians… What? Doesn’t she know that Norway is a democracy? Which means, you know, that if most Norwegians didn’t like what the party in power is doing, they can just vote for a different party?
That’s what Elam getting thoroughly trashed looks like—MRAs saying they disagree with Pamela Geller’s other stances? Have you read the comments? I skimmed the whole page of comments at AVFM and cannot find this thorough trashing you speak of.
That seems like a pretty un-journalistic assessment for such an upstanding individual.
Something to alleviate the cloying boredom that someguy brings with him wherever he goes.
Wow, this sourcewatch page on Democracy Now! is really incredibly short. It barely lists any of the good it does at all, and its only reference is a critique bemoaning the failure of its mission. Tsk tsk, Democracy Now!
It is almost as if sourcewatch is biased or something…
Would it be a good idea to miss a week of classes for medical reasons? I feel absolutely dreadful with no signs of it getting even remotely better any time soon, and I’m considering just writing off coming back to the dorms today as a failed experiment, and just spending the week at home.
Do you have a campus health center? Go there and get a doctor’s note and then stay home for the week to feel better.
That’s what I’ve been trying to do, they’ve been booked up the ying yang all month.
@aworldanonymous, Is there the equivalent of an Urgent Care center? Like, what would you do if you had a sprained ankle? Whether you stay home or not, I feel like you need someone to talk to about things.
Hey some guy,as an MRA, could you tell me what sexually arouses you more: beating a woman or raping her?