On Friday, expat woman-hating woman-chaser Roosh Valizadeh put up a post on his Return of Kings blog with the sensationalized headline “Did Anita Sarkeesian Commit Felony Wire Fraud?”
Roosh breathlessly “reported” that
Two independent journalists have confirmed with the San Francisco Police Department that Anita Sarkeesian, a video game social justice warrior, may have used false pretenses to raise money for her non-profit entity. The police have said that she has not contacted them as she claimed after receiving a Twitter death threat in August. Under Federal law, this may put her on the hook for felony wire fraud.
The two “independent journalists” in question are tech journalist and self-described “fan of 4chan” Milo Yiannopoulos of Breitbart, and Davis Aurini, the cigarette-smoking, scotch-drinking, Anton LaVey-looking blogger who’s trying to raise money to make a “documentary” about the evils of Anita Sarkeesian and “social justice warriors.”
Both journalists – well, the one dude who writes for a sleazeball right-wing site and the other dude who’s not actually a journalist at all – did indeed contact the San Francisco Police Department and were told by a media spokesman that he couldn’t find a record of Sarkeesian contacting them about the threats she received in August.
This bit of “news” sent #GamerGaters and other Sarkeesian-haters around the internet into a bit of a frenzy.
But it turns out they got worked up over nothing. The police spokesman just hadn’t looked hard enough. A day after Tweeting a number of accusatory questions to Sarkeesian, Yiannopoulos had to backtrack, noting in a series of Tweets that he’d had another conversation with the SFPD, who told him that Sarkeesian had in fact reported the harassment to the FBI.
Another writer posted emails he’d gotten from the police spokesman that seemed to confirm Yiannopoulos’ updated information. In the emails, SFPD Public Information Officer Albie Esparza said that Sarkeesian had indeed contacted the SFPD in August but that the case had been handed off to the FBI. (I’ve confirmed this with Esparza .)
Given that the main “proof” that Sarkeesian was lying about the threats she said she received had just vanished into thin air, you might expect that Roosh and Aurini might, you know, correct their now-clearly incorrect posts on the subject and retract their accusations. Well, not so much.
Roosh’s post remains up, with only a brief “update” at the end, noting that “the police have changed their story and now state that they were contacted.” Aurini’s post remains unchanged, and as I write this he’s posted nothing more on the subject.
Even considering the people we’re dealing with here, the hypocrisy is breathtaking.
Roosh ends his post by declaring that
these new revelations concerning Sarkeesian show that no form of media is safe from the SJW and feminist agenda, and that we must do all the fact checking ourselves. The entire media establishment in the United States is potentially corrupt. Proceed accordingly.
Yet he refuses to frankly acknowledge that the “new revelations concerning Sarkeesian” were based on faulty information, offering instead a weasel-worded “update.”
Aurini, for his part, claims in his post to be “fight[ing] for openness and integrity within Tech and Video Game circles.” But he hasn’t bothered to update his post.
When ethical journalists discover that they were wrong about something, they acknowledge their errors and post straightforward corrections. When they get something spectacularly wrong, they apologize.
Somehow I don’t think we’ll be getting apologies from either of these guys.
And thus we get to the whole wire fraud thing. In his post, Roosh repeated a claim made by Mike Cernovich of the “game” blog Danger and Play, who tweeted:
https://twitter.com/PlayDangerously/status/510245982131335169
https://twitter.com/PlayDangerously/status/510246926990594048
As it turns out, there’s zero proof that Sarkeesian lied about anything here. And she made no direct connection between the threats and her Tweet asking for donations.
Indeed, by Cernovich’s logic it’s Davis Aurini, not Anita Sarkeesian, who’s guilty of felony wire fraud. Why?
Because in his post, he made a direct connection between his accusations against Sarkeesian and his own fundraising efforts. Here’s how he ended his piece:
Personally, I’d like to see a lot MORE documentation on Sarkeesian, because this isn’t the only claim she’s made which I suspect is fraudulent – and not just her, but all of the individuals hiding behind the shield of Social Justice, and the journalists who have been aiding and abetting them, culminating in outrage known as #GamerGate. That’s why Jordan Owen and myself have started a Patreon page, so that we can create a feature-length documentary about these people and their methods, and how they bully and victimize the very people they claim to support.
So please help us get this documentary made, so that we can fight for openness and integrity within Tech and Video Game circles, and expose the professional victims for the con artists that they are. Please support our documentary, The Sarkeesian Effect: Inside the World of Social Justice Warriors.
Given that Aurini now knows that his post was based on faulty information, and given that he hasn’t corrected his post or retracted his insinuations, could he now be guilty of felony wire fraud?
For what it’s worth, I don’t think so. While admittedly I’m no lawyer, Cernovich’s logic seems to me like a bit of a stretch.
I do feel safe in saying, however, that neither Roosh V. nor Davis Aurini should be lecturing anyone about ethics.
UPDATE: I confirmed with the SFPD that Sarkeesian had indeed called the SFPD and that the case was handed off to the FBI; the post has been updated to reflect that.
Trolls today are so lazy.
InsanityBytes was unpleasant on many levels.
She reminds me of Judgy Bitch, like if you genespliced her with Sunshine Mary.
Back in my day, trolls had to work hard! Those goats didn’t just fall off the bridges, you know. Someone had to get up off their butts and push them! These young trolls today think they can just spew on their keyboards and all the goats will just come up and cook themselves! Lazy, no-good, modern trolls! Also, get out of my med cart!
::shakes fist angrily and limps away with her walker to answer the call bell::
Ewwww… Thanks, cassandrakitty, now I’m going to have nightmares. ::pulls the blanket over head and sucks thumb while whimpering::
They need to go back to troll school and retake the troll equivalent of first grade.
If you click on Armenia4ever’s name and check out his blog you will come to a post called Tumblr: where the really wild things of privilege dwell. In this post he says:
and:
I don’t think this person is trans at all. He just thinks it’s amusing to tell all us SJW’s to check our privilege. Haha, isn’t he clever?
Pretty obvious the troll hasn’t seen any of Anita’s videos if they assume she hasn’t addressed the issues of the gender binary. The episode of the “Ms. Male” character covered that when talking about the arbitrary nature of gendered signifiers on characters when marking them as female.
I think I need an asshole to English translation for “contradiction theory”. And yeah, anyone whose trolldar didn’t immediately start ringing the moment trolly tried the whole “we trans people” thing needs to take theirs in to the shop for repairs.
Actually, I doubt they’d make it past troll kindergarten. Ah, I remember how all the little trolls had to line up in their little troll uniforms and be inspected. If you didn’t pass inspection, you had to go sit in the Naughty Spot, a horrid place full of butterflies and sunlight, where gentle meadow breezes wafted the scent of wild flowers. A true punishment for naughty little trolls! Then we had to learn the trollabet and recite the trolls tables. No slip ups or off to the Naught Spot! Then we had to devour a goat whole. You modern trolls couldn’t keep up! They need a calculator just to count the Billy Goats Gruff! I blame the guberment! and standardized testing!
Trollboy pinged my radar long before the “I’m trans.” He’s just a shithead. Trying to use what happened with Ally as leverage should be a ban right there.
Whelp. That was a confusing word salad.
::burp::
Yet another troll who didn’t think other people knew how to use the internet.
I’m honestly curious as to why all the gamergate-related trolls have been so shite. 4chan used to be better at trolling than this.
cassandra: I think I need an asshole to English translation for “contradiction theory”. And yeah, anyone whose trolldar didn’t immediately start ringing the moment trolly tried the whole “we trans people” thing needs to take theirs in to the shop for repairs.
While not dispositive, I found his handle indicative. That he’s so stupid/clueless/arrogant as to think no one will click through to see that he’s lying… well it’s much of a muchness.
It’s incredible that when you view much of today’s arguments on any subject matter, contradiction theory is all around. Whether its being intolerant of intolerance
Oh! LooK! WORD SALAD. Contadiction theory? I suspect that’s reactionary-speak for cognitive dissonance. Mind you it plainly fails to be either a decent mapping of the idea, nor possessed of logical coherence. It’s glib semantics… “how can you be “tolerant” if you have principles you won’t violate, because “to tolerate means, ‘to accept’, right?”
Which we know it doesn’t. Intolerance is not the direct antonym of tolerance. So, Nationalist DudeBro, here’s a quick rundown:
Tolerance, in this context, means to be accepting of another person’s right to be. It isn’t a blanket acceptance of every douchecanoe at face value. It’s not, “everything is just a matter of opinion”, or, “We all agree to disagree”.
1: Somethings are fundamentally antithetical to people being accepted for themselves (e.g. misogyny; to be on topic to the parent subject of the blog, or Racism, for something which is at least as pernicious to Western Society; e.g. the scorn with which many people treat Armenians. Ablism is another axis on that map [which isn’t flat]. I’m sure you can identify with at least one of those issues).
2: You can believe any piece of fatheaded nonsense you like. I don’t give a shit.
3: If you act (and speaking in favor of such things is acting) on those fatheaded ideas, I (for one) will push back. If you speak, I will correct you. If you try to pass legislation, I will oppose you. If I see you engaging in physical behaviors, I will stop you.
4: Because allowing you (or your ilk) to harm others, in the name of “tolerance” is to abnegate my responsibities. It’s letting the assholes win, because I’m not willing to be confrontational.
5: I am willing to be confrontational. I was paid to be very confrontational. I’m good at it. I get a pension for having been good at it. I see no reason to stop.
Which means I’m, damned skippy, gonna be “intolerant” of your intolerance.
Because, on top of being a creep, you are morally deficient.
cassandra: 4Chan used to be more limited in the ways they trolled. They went for “button pushing”, which is pretty easy. Most assholes can find some button to push (on someone), so with enough people swarming about they’d be able to raise some ire, and then sit back and enjoy the lulz.
Lately they’ve decided they needed to work on, “subversion”. That’s hard. You can’t subvert what you don’t understand. Since feminism is large, and disjoint, and full of decades of ideas, nomenclature, jargon, and internal debates, arguments (and the odd feud), it’s not something one can just “pick up”.
Moreover, because there are those decades of history, lots of things are subtextual. When someone who understands the issues makes a good faith “check your privilege” statement it gets pretty immediate reaction (both from those who agree, and those who don’t).
When such a claim is made weakly, but still from the right general part of the philosophical spectrum it tends to cause heated debate; some of which a lulz troll might mistake for the sort of thing they want to achieve.
When someone who ought to know better makes a bad-faith claim of ‘x-opression’ it tends to cause various levels of strife/implosion.
So anyone who doesn’t understand why the word is so potent/loaded/charged might think it’s some sort of trump card.
But it’s not, and whipping it out on people who’ve not done anything to merit a charge of privilege blindness, and understand the causes of privilege blindness is gonna get a, “dude… get over yourself” response.
Which baffles them: as someone else said, “the manual said it would work. It works when they do it. I’ll just try again, with more buzzwords,” until someone swats the fly.
Thanks for posting this. It really needed to be said. I’ll try to share this as much as possible.
Keep up the good work. =)
Yeah, I really do think they’ve bitten off more than they can chew this time. You can’t subvert a group that you don’t understand, and even if they did understand progressives they don’t have the social skills needed for successful subversion.
This one may have seen the thread of doom and thought “oh, look, mention this thing and they’ll all start arguing again!”, but the problem is that he has no idea what we were actually arguing about.
I don’t think he saw anything at all.
The, “I’ve been lurking” is a different attempt to buy cred. I’ve seen it so many times/places that it’s tempting to reflexively dismiss it. But for Nationalist Boy to have been reading enough to have read that thread, all the way to the end, would also be to have read enough to know that it’s not likely any of the claims being made would work (and I see three, 1: His being trans [which I was skeptical of, before looking at his blog*), our need to “check our cis-privilege, and that of our being TERFs/tran phobic).
Instead the (theoretically cheap, almost free) claim of being a lurker is supposed to make one both “one of the crowd”, but also to generate sympathy. They are a fellow-traveller, and finally making the leap into commenting.
It’s also supposed to make other people ignore infelicities, because obviously they know the subtexts of the community.
I suspect the “he’s using past events to troll” is us projecting. It was a big deal, and there are still people processing it. The questions of what happened, why it happened and what we can do to prevent such a things from happening again, without changing the general nature of the community are on our minds.
His broad claim, married to that bit of catchphrase-invocation, makes us wonder if the things which bothered us are so obvious to other people as well. We are second guessing ourselves in private, which leads to such second guessing in public. In a place less solidly structured than this, that might lead to conflict.
But, to do that would require him to actually know the local issues; and he doesn’t.
*where today he posted, “My motto: surround yourself with motivated people with a sense of self-responsiblity. Ignore the haters and SJWs like they aren’t even there. Light trolling can be useful sometimes however.
Pecu is right. I didn’t see shit, and I have no idea who Ally is.
I also identify as trans for any conversations where gender is brought up.
Also stop oppressing me cis scum!
Do you similarly identify as totes-not-a-troll whenever trolling comes up?
Fuck off, armenia.
Just a plain ol’ liar. Not even good at it.
MASSIVE FAIL FROM WORD ONE.
Next!
I literally love you people. Haven’t been this amused since ‘Nam.
Oh yeahz. Massive fail and all that. Such fail. Ouch.
Nam is what you call your mom’s house, right?