The good folks at A Voice for Men, the most influential Men’s Rights site out there, like to talk a lot about how much they hate hatred. Specifically, the alleged hatred allegedly promoted by feminists. Here’s Dean Esmay, the site’s Managing Editor and Chief Operations Officer, offering some typically nuanced thoughts on the subject earlier today on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/deanesmay/status/597082318168272896
So how have the powers that be at AVFM responded to the revelation that one of their contributors, Indian MRA Amartya Talukdar, is a Holocaust denier and Hitler fan who thinks Hillary Clinton is a “Jewess?” Did they denounce Talukdar for his embrace of perhaps the most hateful hater in history, and take down his posts on their site? Not so much.
I sent a few Tweets to AVFM head man Paul Elam cataloguing some of Talukdar’s more colorful statements on Twitter; Elam responded by blocking me.
So I sent an email to Esmay.
Dean —
It seems a bit odd for someone who goes on about the alleged “hatred” allegedly promoted by feminists and the SPLC to remain silent about the fact that AVFM just published a post written by a Holocaust denier and Hitler fan,
And, no, that’s not hyperbole. Here’s the proof — these are all archived tweets of his.
Here are the Tweets I linked to. (Click on the images to see the archived versions.)
(In case you’re wondering about the abrupt ending there, Talukdar was trying to write “hail [sic] Hitler” and ran out of characters. He finished up in a followup Tweet.)
I then linked Esmay to my post on the subject, telling him he could find more examples there.
I continued:
Maybe you didn’t know. But you know now — and so does Paul; I contacted him about it on Twitter, and he responded by blocking me, so it’s clear he saw my Tweets. …
So will you or Paul be doing anything about this?
A fairly simple question, no?
Here was Esmay’s thoughtful response:
So I’m going to take that as a “no, AVFM will not be doing anything about the fact that they have published the writings of a Holocaust denier and Hitler fan who thinks Hillary Clinton is a ‘Jewess.'”
When I first wrote about Talukdar’s, er, interesting beliefs, I said I thought AVFM would respond to the news by deflecting and denying the truth. I didn’t expect Elam would also block me on Twitter for asking, or that Esmay would declare me a “stalker madman” after dismissing direct evidence of Talukdar’s beliefs as somehow being “lies” on my part.
The AVFMers aren’t the only ones trying to employ evasive maneuvers. Talukdar has deleted his original Holocaust-denying, Hitler-praising Tweets. And when I sent him Tweets asking him about his beliefs he first responded by
- listing a number of famous anti-Semites (including Henry Ford and Richard Wagner and George Washington, who actually wasn’t an anti-Semite) and asking if I expected him to hate them too
- asking me “why is there rampant divorce illegitimacy and teenage pregnancy in USA”
- telling me that “you are a fundamentalist who uses terror to scuttle people’s voice”
- telling me that “you are a hate monger who doesn’t believe in freedom of speech.”
Several hours later, after I wrote to Esmay, Talukdar tried a new tack, admitting that Hitler was indeed a “devil” and a “hate monger”and promising that he would stop denying the Holocaust … if I acknowledged the Bengal Famine.
Obviously, this makes no sense; his beliefs on the Holocaust should not be contingent on what some random person believes about a different historical event. I wrote back:
@a_talukdar You'll agree that there was a Holocaust … if I agree that there was a Bengal famine? That makes no sense whatsoever.
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) May 9, 2015
@a_talukdar I don't deny the Bengal famine, or Churchill's large role in it, but why would that change what you think about the Holocaust?
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) May 9, 2015
I asked him why, if he honestly believed that Hitler was a hate monger, he had Tweeted “hail [sic] Hitler” less than a week ago. He replied:
I told him that this also made no sense, and that it sounded like he was just telling me what he thought I wanted to hear. I asked him to explain why, as recently as this past week, he had declared the Holocaust a “lie” and “propaganda devoid of any facts,” and was demanding proof that Hitler’s gas chambers had even existed.
After a series of evasive non-answers Talukdar grudgingly admitted:
Shortly afterwards he took his account private. (Luckily I thought to screenshot his recent Tweets before he did this; see here. The only one missing is the one listing anti-Semites.)
These aren’t, I daresay, the actions of someone who has actually changed his mind. So you’ll have forgive me if I doubt the sincerity of his apparent, if grudging, rejection of the Holocaust denial he was so recently, and repeatedly, espousing.
Stalker madman? SERIOUSLY?
As somebody who has been a victim of stalking that is just a bizarre response on his part.
I especially like the dig about how you make your money when his bud Paul E. has actually been caught scamming people.
It’s like dude wants his life to be a soap opera or something.
Weird. Maybe someone (AVfM?) privately asked him to stop being so embarrassing. That’s the only way these change of hearts make any sense to me.
“Stalker madman”, saith the shit-headed shit-fer-brains shitlord.
And he calls feminism a “multibillion $$ hate industry”? At the very least, he COULD produce some balance sheets as proof. If he were for real, that is.
Dean Esmay is, in short, not a person to be taken seriously on any level.
It is ironic that this man idolizes Hitler, who would have gladly seen him to the ovens as he is non-caucasian.
Wow. I thought my little discovery was just an amusing detail but this is more amazing than I anticipated lol!
“…you’re a professional liar who gets his money on the backs of the bruised…”
What is it with Esmay and Nine Inch Nails?
I was wondering why that sounded so familiar to me.
Who the fuck glorifies Churchill? He rolled over and let Hitler have Poland!
OH FUCK. YOU LEAVE NIN OUT OF THIS!
So, who had money on the “you’re the hater for pointing out hate!” response?
I wonder what exactly he would say to the police. “Officer, this man continues to send me emails asking pertinent questions! Send him to Azkaban!”
Churchill was also the brains trust behind Gallipoli and the overthrow of Mossadegh. He had a LOT of blood on his hands. Still not as bad as Hitler.
I am aware that ‘not as bad as Hitler’ is damning with faint praise, or possibly praising with faint damns.
What I don’t understand is why they (virtually everyone at AVFM) calls you a liar, when you hand them quotations directly from themselves? The only embellishment here is the humour to make the subject matter marginally more bearable.
Has David ever tried making a post about the blueness of the sky or the wetness of water just to see the MRA response? Either way, I’d love to see it.
I don’t know much about Wagner, but Washington was cool with owning other humans and Henry Ford was actually kind of an anti-Semitic, anti-worker’s rights shit, so yeah, it’s okay if you dislike those two.
They had opportunity to look like halfway decent humans. They could have said “we here at AVFM had no idea that Talukdar believed these vile things. This doesn’t reflect our beliefs and we denounce them and will delete his post right away.” But, no. They had to make themselves look even worse.
Once again Janet does a poor job at PR. If she was an actual PR person she would have recommended apologizing and distancing themselves.
In addition to being terrible people, the AVFM crew are cartoonishly incompetent in every way.
Henry Ford was pretty rabidly anti-Semitic, and a big promoter of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The weird thing about Washington is that people have attributed anti-Semitic quotes to him — not to make him look bad, but in order to bolster the cause of anti-Semitism. So probably the only reason Talukdar thinks that Washington was an anti-Semite is that he (Talukdar) hangs out with a lot of fellow anti-Semites.
cretaceouskitteh78, thanks again for alerting me about this! I will happily give you credit in the posts if you’d like. (I asked this before; if you already answered, sorry; I didn’t see it; I think I’m a little behind on comments.)
MRAs are apparently completely allergic to admitting anything even resembling a mistake. AVFM could have simply said: we had no idea he was an anti-Semite (they probably didn’t). and so we’re taking down his posts. That would have been embarrassing, but not the end of the world. Instead they respond with arglebargle and denial and, well, lies, because saying that I’m lying about the Tweets — which are obviously real, and which I provided them — is a pretty blatant lie.
ninjaed!
They won’t dissociate themselves from a Hitler fetishist, but WE’re the “hate movement”. I wonder how many $$$ Paulie’s planning to rake in here.
PS: For their next big move, my money’s on a petulant, incoherent rant from Paulie and/or Deano. All about what a lying liar David is, etc.
I would actually guess something more like “pretend it never happened.” That seems to be what their original plan was, before David tweeted and emailed them.
I hadn’t realized that Esmay was quoting NIN again; he wrote a rant about me a while back in which he quoted pretty much that whole song. Which reminds me:
Somehow I suspect that if Esmay heard this his head would explode.
I kind of like this one too:
I love it!
Looking at the AVFM website, this little gem, written by Dean Esmay caught my eye:
“SPLC spreads hate while a man starves – and David Pakman lets them do it.
David Pakman gives Mark Potok of the wealthy fatcat hate group known as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) a free pass to spread fear and loathing of human rights activists. Mr. Pakman, do you have any shame?”
and later in the ‘article’:
“Pakman has not so much as approached us to comment before allowing the odious hate group known as the SPLC bash the innocent men and women of the Men’s Human Rights Movement, who are incredibly easy to find and talk to (me and Paul can be reached right here).”
David, have you found it incredibly easy to talk to Dean and Paul?
Bina, you are correct. “Dean Esmay is, in short, not a person to be taken seriously on any level.”
On Richard Wagner’s anti-semitism.