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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.
No, Elam doesn’t ban people for disagreeing with them.—he makes vague threats to have them be harassed, suffer pain and possibly be killed. What a nice guy.
Or doxxes them and/or offers bounties on them.
And there was that whole ‘never convict a rapist’ thing of his. But it’s not like he occasionally bans someone from the comments section of his own damn blog. That shit’s low.
Oh, Elam bans people. He generally bans feminists after about two or three comments at most, and seems to really really enjoy it.
Someguy, I challenge you to do your same schtick over there — pretend to be someone bored by Elam but yet deeply, deeply concerned about his journalistic integrity — and see how long you last.
Or if you’re too lazy to do this, why don’t you spend a little time going through comments there and see if you can find any feminists posting anything. If by chance you find one or two, count the number of posts they make before getting banned.
‘
Also, on another topic: aworldanonymous, get yourself to a doctor! And take care of yourself before worrying about your classes!
Aworldanon, have you called the campus health center? Even if they can’t treat you right now they should at least be able to provide you with a note explaining why you missed a few classes. If you have a cold rather than the flu there’s not much a doctor can do for you other than tell you to eat soup, drink orange juice, and rest. If you think you might have the flu (achy limbs are usually a good clue) then you’d be doing your classmates as well as yourself a favor by just staying home till you feel better. Missing one week of classes so early in the term is no big deal.
Aworldanon, just take the week off, and have some rest. Health can’t wait, but classes can be sorted out. Please don’t worry about it – I frequently take whole months off my PhD for my boring, draining but invisible condition and the university is always supportive.
Can I ignore someguy? Anyone who thinks “is helping to make more prominent the criticisms of the SPLC” is good rhetoric just makes me headdesk and skip to the end.
I’m ignoring him until he adopts a rhetorical style that makes me feel less like drowning myself in a giant vat of vodka. I suppose we could turn it into a drinking game, but if we took a sip every time he wrote something tedious or pretentious we’d all end up in the ER.
Random, but the shortened version of this post’s title in the recent comments section is hilarious (at least, as it appears to me). It gets shortened to “A Voice for Men publishes a po…”, and I just mentally add another “o”.
I like my version of the title better.
@Shade: I would mentally add an ‘e’, personally…
@someguy: Derail, derail, derail.
So, did Elam take down the essay?
It looks like it.
It’s almost like posting someone’s writing without actually reading it first was a bad idea or something.
I tell my 19 year old students that maybe reading the whole article helps, you know, not make you sound like a prat or something.
Ah, he took it down, did he? Poor Elam- the internet doesn’t forget. And all these trolls wandering in in full blown pout- I’m sorry, dears, but if you’re using the written works of a hate movement to deride a group that has spent decades fighting for civil rights it is really time to rethink your position.
So he is capable of shame. Interesting.
Shame’s the wrong word- he’s got the barest inkling of bad pr. Retroactively, of course.
He’s not having the best few weeks in terms of his decision making skills and the results thereof, is he?
And as it turns out I feel a lot better this morning, though knowing how I get with colds, I should be feeling dreadful again by night time.
@clairedammit: I like Sadly, No! a lot, but I’m uncomfortable with how they mock people. Kathryn Jean Lopez is a virgin because she’s fat. Dafydd ab Hugh gets photoshopped with humongous sandwiches in his hands. Charles Krauthammer’s wheelchair is a stick to beat him with.
They’re funny when they’re not doing that. The frequency with which they do it makes me feel like I have to choose between Sadly, No! and places like Manboobz.
@Nathan: *hands Nathan a wad of Kleenex* Geez, I probably shouldn’t have said anything if you’re going to go all kung fu on your desk with your head.
@Myoo — I’m laughing so hard it’s fit to break my prosthetic forehead.
@aworld — I’d definitely still go get checked out if I were you. I’m glad you’re feeling better, but ignoring feeling bad and working at classes is a great way to make it worse, and last longer.
@Aworld: dude, if you’re sick and can’t get to a doctor, call up your professors and explain that you’re sick, can’t get to the dr, etc., and ask them about the possibility of making up this week’s classes. They may or may not be sympathetic–nine out of ten of my professors in college would bend over backwards to help me out if I had a problem.
In other news; places where young people gather are a breeding ground for stronger, tougher diseases. All those young immune systems, killing the weak colds, letting the strong ones grow stronger…..
Aworldanon: I’m with Howard; even if you’re feeling better now, flag it up and give yourself a bit of time and rest. No point operating on 80% capacity. Like Howard, most of my professors are very sympathetic.
@AWorld
There’s no way you’ll be the only person to have come down with Fresher’s Flu (I don’t know if other countries call it that but it’s definitely a recognised phenomenon in the UK), your professors will probably expect a proportion of the first years to get sick in the first term. You won’t miss much work, and what you do you can catch up on. Go home, lie in bed, watch cartoons, eat soup and keep your fluids up. Keeping yourself in a stressful environment and trying to pretend to be well is the one surefire way of staying ill for longer.
Take care.
yeah, took a gander at that sourcewatch sight of yours, Sticky. Seems the criticism of the SPLC and their definition of hate is directed towards their actions against anti-immigration policies and pretty transparently politically motivated. Want to know what didn’t make the list of criticisms- the SPLC’s assessment of the MRM. Also, you may have somehow won the selective reading Olympics and missed Dave citing his sources, but since most people aren’t quite so adept at tuning out those highlighted links provided right in the text and usually in the same paragraph as whatever it is he is criticizing, you may as well stop pretending that’s a given. Also, the purpose of this site is to find and mock the absolutely atrocious things said by members of the MRM. That’s what he does, that’s why this blog is here. And just because Dave isn’t bound by any journalistic code of ethics doesn’t mean he isn’t doing a damn fine job for what is probably not the greatest pay-off (manboobz pledge drive, tell your friends). So let’s get to the heart of the matter- sticky, fair and balanced reporting (fox, blech) does not mean for every awful story about someone you have to write a nice one. If an ax murderer also holds doors open for people with their hands full, do you put that on the evening news? No, you just say ‘crazy bastard kills tons of people, news at eleven’. If there are people in the MRM who occasionally say something reasonable and not hate filled, it doesn’t cancel out an equal number of crazy hate-filled things they’ve said. You picking up what I’m throwing down here, sticky? people expect you to be a decent person. That’s the bare minimum. When you stop being decent and start your angry hate-mongering, no one looks back and says ‘well, he spent so many years not hating women, and he’s still cool with so many other minorities- let’s cut this dude some slack’. They are going to call you on your bullshit right now.
I’m an Islamophobe in that ratical Islamists scare me. Moderate Muslims are fine. If I lived in Dark Ages Europe, I’d be a Christophobe. Imagine having to live in fear of misogynistic witch hunters wanting to burn you to death. Ratical religion just has not been kind to our gender.
@thenatfantastic: Well, yeah, it makes sense that one’s immune system has confronted and conquered everything their grade school can throw at them, but at university there’s people from all over and you’d get loads of exciting new germs.
I spent about 4 months on a study program in France and for the first 6 weeks or so I had a snuffling head cold that refused to go away. Kind of made it difficult to enjoy France.