Last month, I reported that Indian Men’s Rights Activist and marital rape apologist Amartya Talukdar — a regular contributor to leading Men’s Rights site A Voice for Men — was a Holocaust denier.
The evidence? A series of Tweets in which, among other things, he declared that the “Holocaust is a lie of gigantic proportion,” expressed a certain admiration for Hitler and, bizarrely, declared that Hillary Clinton was a “Jewess.”
When I asked AVFM’s then-managing editor Dean Esmay about these troubling Tweets from someone he had published on his site only a few days earlier, he responded … by calling me a “stalker madman” and threatening to call the police if I ever emailed him again. (It was, as far as I recall, the only time I’ve ever emailed him.)
Well, ok, I thought, the folks at AVFM seem to be congenitally unable to ever admit to being wrong, even when the evidence is right before their eyes. But I didn’t think AVFM would be dumb enough to post anything by Talukdar ever again.
I was wrong. Yesterday, AVFM put up a new post by him. No, it contains no Holocaust denial or defenses of Hitler. But the question remains: why is AVFM continuing to post the writings of a Holocaust denier even after being presented with irrefutable evidence of his noxious beliefs?
The answer may be that the folks at AVFM live so completely in their own little bubble that they cannot see the evidence right in front of them.
In my email to Esmay, I not only provided a link to my post on Talukdar’s Holocaust denial but also provided direct links to archived copies of four of his most troubling Tweets. Esmay didn’t have to take my word for anything or even look at my post. All AVFM’s “managing editor” had to do was to click four links and read four tweets in order to see the sort of vile nonsense Talukdar had been tweeting.
It’s not clear if Esmay was able to bring himself to do even this much due diligence of a writer he was responsible for publishing.
Instead, as I discovered when looking back through Talukdar’s tweets today, Esmay’s “investigation” of the matter may have consisted of nothing more than this brief Twitter exchange, in which Talukdar, using a technique popular amongst small children and liars of all ages, simply told Esmay what he wanted to hear:
Talukdar took a similar tack with me, though he took a little more time in getting to the “telling me what I wanted to hear” part. Here’s just one of the rather surreal exchanges I had with him on Twitter (click here for more context).
I got no reply to this last question, but I guess I shouldn’t complain; Talukdar also offered no response, at least not on Twitter, to Esmay’s questions on whether or not his remarks had been “taken out of context” or whether he had been “making intemperate remarks you did not mean perhaps?”
I’m not sure in what circumstances saying that the “Holocaust is a lie of gigantic proportion,” or calling Hillary Clinton “a “Jewess” could be dismissed as nothing more than “intemperate remarks” made in the heat of passion; that would be akin to excusing Mel Gibson’s famous rant on how “the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world” as just one of those things people say when they’re pulled over for drunk driving.
But I can help Esmay out with the whole “context” thing. Here are some of Talukdar’s Tweets in their original context on Twitter. (Click on the screencaps below to see archived versions of the Tweets.)
Huh. Somehow that doesn’t seem any better in context.
That’s just as bad.
Not only anti-Semitic, but we’re in tinfoil hat territory now.
Dude, “hail Hitler” is not the preferred nomenclature. It’s “heil.”
As far as I can tell, Talukdar has never apologized for or even directly acknowledged his Holocaust-denying Tweets; he’s content to pretend they never happened, as is, evidently, Dean Esmay.
Weirdly, Talukdar’s attempts to cover up his Holocaust denial have been as cursory as Esmay’s quarter-assed “investigation.” Not long after I posted about him, Talukdar tried to clean up his Twitter timeline by deleting the offending Tweets. But he didn’t get them all.
Indeed, when I searched Twitter for his handle and the word “holocaust” today, I found three of his Holocaust-denial Tweets still up, lurking at the bottom of the search results. (I’ve archived the search results, as well as the individual tweets (1, 2, 3), in case he goes back and deletes them today.)
On his Twitter page, Talukdar describes himself as, among other things, a “Humanist.” A Voice for Men describes itself as the voice of the “Men’s Human Rights Movement.”
So I have to wonder: Do Talukdar and his editors think those killed in the Holocaust were somehow less than human?
H/T — Talukdar himself, who Tweeted me about his latest AVFM post
EDIT: Proofreading correction, minor tweak, added the H/T
@David, could you perhaps take a screenshot of the tweet where Esmay says he’s been raped?
WTF for??
@Bazia
You don’t have to offend people to harm them. I am rarely offended, but I am nevertheless harmed when folks conflate madness with ragey misogynist entitlement.
All Tweets and no replies makes Dean a dull boy.
Regarding IQ tests – I read a SF story yeeears ago, about an advanced civilization contacting Earth and offering them membership in the Galactic Gargleblaster Club, if they can prove that they (we) are sentient/sapient. Humanity’s best test taker, a man of immense intellectual pride is dispatched for testing. He bombs utterly, as the tests the aliens use do not test visual or linguistic aptitude, but factors dictated by their own culture and physiology.
Regarding collaboration in France during the Occupation, it has come to light that Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas were sheltered from deportation by a great good friend of theirs who wound up working in Paris for the Germans. They had no problem with the Occupation, apparently, as long as it didn’t interfere with their own lives. Meanwhile, their buddy in Paris was sending all the Freemasons he could find to the camps. Stein attempted to intercede on his behalf after the war. Strange how many Modernist artists and writers in the pre-WWII period were various flavors of right-wing.
Wait wait wait, Robert. Yes, they were sheltered from death by a person who respected Stein as a writer.No, It’s wrong to say they did not care about the plight of others under the occupation. Yes, Stein tried to save her old friend after the war, pointing out that he had saved her, a Jew. for instance. She was not right-wing, Robert, not at all. She hated the Nazis.
If women on average have a slightly higher IQ AND there are slightly more men in high IQ groups, as assorted studies with all the flaws of the IQ test itself have shown, and we’re being Internet dude brand Rational and pedantically using IQ as a measure of job adeptness and intelligence…doesn’t it actually make sense to prefer *women*?
High IQ individuals are by definition 1% of the population – and that’s not all geniuses, who IIRC are something like 0.1% of the population.
As somebody hiring in a crowded field, you’re not going to get one, basically. Better prefer the gender that is on average more intelligent to maximize your workplace average IQ, rather than playing the risky male field in hopes of catching unicorns!
Sarcasm, of course. And having been labeled “gifted” as a kid myself, in the process knowing a few extremely intelligent people 3/4 of the way between whatever they call me and genius, high intelligence is actually a negative trait to have for most non-specialist/acadenic jobs. With high intelligence comes high levels of boring task intolerance.
I’ve even seen that Wonderlic (IQ basically) employment test. Employers who use it will get back a report that red flags those who score higher than “necessary” for a given job just as much as those who score lower.
That, and keeping in mind intelligence != good at this specific task, tolerable to work with, having overcome intrinsic cognitive biases that can often be magnified by a “faster” brain, etc.
And that the nature of IQ tests and poverty often keeps many intelligent children from getting the academic stimulation they deserve so, so much more than Bobby-whose-rich-mother-made-him-cram-IQ-tests. (The state of gifted identification and education in certain big cities is truly lamentable, but that’s a story for another day.)
The Second Sex is the book which has had the most influence on my life and beliefs. I would be more critical of de Beauvoir’s behavior if I could convince myself that I would have been thoroughly courageous in the face of Nazi brutality.
We have been over the issue of IQ tests many times but I always feel it bears repeating; One of my professors in freshman psychology class at Harvard quipped that IQ is “that which is measured by IQ tests.” The tests were originally designed to identify children with low intelligence so that they could receive special attention. The idea that you can (1) accurately measure all the different aspects of human intelligence and then (2) express the result as a single integer value is bizarre and ludicrous. (As one of the “winners” in the IQ game, I’ve always felt a special obligation to point out how severely flawed they are as a measure of human potential.)
I have read that there have been times when preliminary testing of a new IQ test has resulted in females scoring higher than males, which has been “fixed” by increasing the number of spatial-skill questions and decreasing the number of verbal-skill questions. And, as to the spatial vs verbal issue, I would argue that girls are traditionally encouraged to play social games which develop verbal skills whereas boys are traditionally encouraged to play games on fields with balls and such that develop spatial skills — and I defy anyone to prove that that doesn’t have some influence on IQ scores. I’ll mention POM’s example of being good at spatial manipulations due to being taught woodworking and having an interest in astronomy. The fact is, you can manipulate IQ tests to get just about gender-based result you want, and since most tests are designed by men …
Of course I majored in English and my wife majored in Physics, so we found it fairly difficult to pass the gender stereotypes on to our children — all four of whom (two of each sex) have majored in STEM fields. Considering the extent to which our society is dependent on STEM, not having a penis should not be a disqualification.
Robert: You’re not thinking of A.E. van Vogt’s “A Can of Paint” are you?
Who is Dean talking to?
Dean does know he’s the only one saying the racist stuff he’s saying, right?
Does he think he’s convincing people someone else said the stuff he is saying?
Has he convinced himself?
The Mary Sue is hateful?
Macho feminist whaaaa?
Today one of my kids pretended that his favorite stuffed animal traveled to a planet where everyone was a fence to challenge them to a game of chess*. That made more sense than Deans tweets.
*Too much Doctor Who?
@Policy of Madness
I think you misunderstood my comment. The reason I am asking is because AVFM often lie about stuff they have posted earlier and sometimes even delete it. It was just to have it as a proof, just in case. Especially because they are known for not really being nice to rape victims. Is that weird..?
@chronically lurking and @GrumpyOldSocialJusticeMangina,
yes, you have presented good arguments. But of course, it’s much easier just to say that men are smarter and more creative and be done with it. Lol.
@Hypatia: easier, and more likely to deprive someone who might have made a major contribution of the opp0ortunity because uterus
How adorable of Deano to project all the racist stereotypes MRAs hold dear for trying to shut up feminists…onto feminists. Deano, in case you’re reading this: Next time you’re tempted to tell one of us to shut up because Women Over There Have It Worse Than You, Cupcake — just shut the fuck up, yourself.
Cupcake.
@Yes Artistically
I thought it was fairly well known that Dean Esmay was sexually victimized as a child. It’s hardly a secret that needs to be documented before it falls into the bit bucket.
So basically Esmay is just a less funny version of Jeff Dunham now?
Jeff Dunham was funny?
I’ll say what an old professor once told me:
“We know iq tests are measuring something, but we have no idea what it is.”
@Binjabreel: the ironic part of my professor’s comment was that this was a survey course with a number of different lecturers, and another guy who gave a couple of the lectures was Richard Herrnstein, a disciple of the recently-retired B. F. Skinner, who became most famous as the co-author of the racist book “The Bell Curve” which claimed to prove the intellectual inferiority of non-whites based on ridiculously small (and probably culturally produced) differences in scores on standardized intelligence tests.
Oh, for WHTM regulars: At another site (political) that I also haunt, someone has just posted a comment claiming that blacks are carrying on a guerilla war against whites, and citing Roissy’s uber-racist rant on Chateau Heartiste as his proof.
@Grumpy
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/rckstr.gif
http://24.media.tumblr.com/3eee40e59c9dbb9eec13a45b96760a56/tumblr_moad1fwFpq1r3wac6o1_r1_500.gif
The French Left has historically had a, shall we say, problematic position on age of consent laws and the lengths it could take sexual libertinism to.
In any case, age of consent laws were introduced in many Western countries in the late 19th century through the efforts of feminists and child welfare advocates. Even though there was a certain level of hysteria about sex, people recognized that there were huge power imbalance issues when older men had sex with teenage girls. The reactionaries and Manosphereans seem to be the only people nowadays who think we should lower the age of consent to 10-12.
I forgot that “hysteria” is a slur. I’m sorry.
Re IQ tests
I saw a comment one a blog once that went something like:
IQ tests consist of questions that can be solved without external research, by a single person, in a short amount of time, and have a clearly defined right or wrong answer. Real world problems share none of these qualities.
Historically and indeed presently. Dominique Strauss-Kahn would very likely be the French President today if he hadn’t attempted to assert his attitude concerning sexual libertinism towards a New York chambermaid four years ago – the fallout from which revealed that he genuinely seemed to think that this behaviour was perfectly normal.