Men’s Rights Activists love to “warn” women that they may soon face a day of reckoning if they don’t shape up and start acting the way MRAs think they should. Don’t make men angry, they say; you wouldn’t like us when we’re angry!
Still, most MRAs making these “predictions” at least make a token effort to pretend to be horrified at the notion of men rising up to wreak vengeance upon uppity women. This isn’t what we want, they assure women; it’s just what will happen if you continue to “provoke” men with your bad behavior.
Other MRAs find it impossible to contain their glee; like doomsday preppers with well-stocked bunkers and enough ammo to kill every living thing within a 500 mile radius, they can’t wait for the end of the world.
Peter Andrew Nolan is one of these other MRAs. And he’s started to celebrate a little bit early.
In a series of recent blog posts and Tweets, Nolan has heralded a number of murders of women at the hands of their exes in his native Australia as portents of a new age of antifeminist retribution. (Click on screenshots below to see archived versions of these Tweets.)
I’m sure actress Denise Richards was delighted to find the above in her Twitter notifications, sent as a reply to a Tweet of hers wishing her father a happy Father’s Day.
Several feminists who ended up in a discussion with him on Twitter were treated to the following.
As Nolan sees it, the murder of women in Australia and Ireland is now perfectly legal, as he has officially declared war upon both countries.
Nolan thinks politicians and police officers are also legitimate targets in his “war.”
And he assures us this “war” will continue until he is properly compensated for whatever terrible injustices he thinks have been done to him.
Now, Nolan’s “legal” claims are of course ludicrous, and he is obviously in no position to “release” any murderers of women in either Ireland or Australia.
But as bizarre as his arguments are, Nolan is no troll; as longtime readers of this blog know all too well, he’s deadly serious about all of this.
The man who used to call himself Peter-Andrew: Nolan©, but who now prefers to call himself Joschua-Brandon: Boehm©, is a follower of the exceedingly strange and dangerous Sovereign Citizen movement. He thinks the odd punctuation he’s added to his various names actually means something important, and he does indeed believe that he is at war with Ireland and Australia, that murdering women is legal in both countries, and that he has the right to enforce these claims of his as best he can.
Happily, he is not actually in either of these countries — last I heard, he’s in Germany, and as I understand it, he is barred from entering Ireland and possibly Australia as well. At least according to the laws that the rest of the world follows.
This isn’t the first time Nolan has justified or indeed celebrated violence against women. His declarations of “war” are not new. He’s offered some (barely) qualified praise for far-right mass murderer Anders Breivik, and at one point he warned any women thinking of commenting on his laughable Facebook ripoff MAN-BOOK that he just might just kill them for it.
But these recent Tweets are pretty brazen, even by his standards. He is clearly a threat to women, as well as to politicians and government employees regardless of gender.
H/T — @TheFirstPaige
NOTE TO COMMENTERS: Please avoid describing Nolan as “crazy,” or attempting to diagnose his mental health. Mental illness doesn’t cause hate. And please refrain from violent language, even when it is clearly metaphorical.
Sarah,
Stop doubling down. We don’t internet diagnose here and we do not equate violence and hate with mental illness. No othering. No ableism.
EJ,
“Girls are women” coming from men who think raping women is A-OK is pretty scary. I hope neither are allowed near little girls.
mockingbird,
Because no one cares about violence toward women.
I wrote that before reading the comments.
Ninja’d but still curious.
@Sunnysombra: reading the German version of the site, it says that for a comment to be considered Volksverhetzung by non-German citizens, it has to “have the same effect as if the comment had been made in Germany”. For this “it is enough if the website the comment has been made on can be accessed from Germany.
So he might just be in for hate speech. He likely won’t ever be taken to court here, to my great shame, but there IS the possibility.
@Lea – The overwhelming response does seem to be, “Aw, he’s just spouting off, blowing off steam!” rather than, “Wait…this person’s actually dismissing the import of, advocating for, and threatening murder.”
…and then the same people who would dismiss his speech get up in arms over the “male tears” thing that some do, in a huff because it’s CLEARLY about wanting to hurt men in general rather than a dismissal of some men’s complaints regarding feminism in public discourse.
I still can’t figure out why so many of them throw tantrums. Even if they don’t care about our feelings/opinions/rules, wouldn’t apologising and not doing it again just be a thousand times easier?
I know logic isn’t necessarily a strong point of these sorts; but what is his rationale for suggesting it’s not illegal to kill women in Ireland and Australia?
I know the Irish Free State (as my mother would insist on calling it) isn’t the most enlightened place when it comes to women’s rights, but I’m pretty sure they still have a gender neutral law against murder.
@Ælfscýne just today I read the following on a blog chronicling the worst of the infamous “conservative” hate-site FreeRepublic:
“My respect for the police and the judiciary is at such a nadir that I think mob justice would be roughly equivalent. Nearly arbitrary. I have no trust in the system at all. Nonetheless, insofar as we’re to have our civilization for a few more moments, I’ll take capital punishment with its warts. When capital punishment too is completely undermined by the uniparty juiciarchy police state, we may as well foment armed revolt. “
… And no, Sarah, that wasn’t aimed at you specifically, just talking in general. Seriously, if I had a dollar for every time somebody called an MRA “Crazy,” got called on it and threw a fit instead of apologising, I’d be able to afford a new gaming computer. The sort with neon LEDs on the case and a rainbow keyboard.
So hang on, do I have this right? People like Colon-Nolan think that the laws of the land that they disagree with don’t apply to them? But they still want to use, say, roads, emergency services and the like? That sounds like a very weird way to want others to live, for sure. It’s just so completely selfish and dare I say Randian that I can’t believe there’s any sort of organization within the Sovereign Citizen movement. Still, I guess there are weirder things out there.
As for the substance of this post, I really feel that Nolan has crossed the line quite enough now. His threats are starting to sound less like “blowing off steam” and more like the sort of manifesto that guys like him leave behind after a killing spree. I do hope that the German authorities are keeping an eye on him. 🙁
Also, if my post contains ableism or othering, please let me know as I’m still quite new to the site and may make errors without any wish to hurt other posters here. Thank you.
The guy belongs in an asylum. Behind a locked door without keyhole. Permanently.
Anyone else notice a sort of trend this guy falls into, of men who loudly agitate for someone to take some kind of violent action, but are too afraid to do so themselves? “Someone’s gonna take a first shot, and that first shot will be followed by an avalanche of imitators, but I’ll be damned if I fire that first shot myself!” I think I saw this behavior in racists first, but this guy seems to almost be following a script.
FOR GOD’S SAKE ANNE DID YOU NOT JUST READ THE ABOVE COMMENTS?
You may appreciate Emperor Norton:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton#Norton.27s_Imperial_acts
(Here’s hoping I got the quote right.)
If you didn’t I apologise but PLEASE do in future, just to avoid situations like this. Gah.
That said, I’m pretty sure you’ve been called out for ableist comments before…look just don’t, OK?
/spam over
@sunnysombrera
The Volksverhetzungsparagraph is, historically, based on the experience of Nazi racial and antisemitic propaganda. The text of the paragraph emphasizes hate speech against “national, racial, religious or ethnic groups”, but also includes anyone who incites hate or violence against “a part of the population”, or against individuals because of their belonging to this part.
It has, to my knowledge, never been used against misogynists, although I think it could be. I’m guessing that because of a combination of its historical target – basically, old and new Nazis – and general indifference of judicial and police apparatuses towards violence against women, it’s not probable that it ever will.
Looking for Volksverhetzung and antifeminism, I only found complaints from German MRAs that one guy was convicted because of this, but it turns out that his blog was put on watch by a Landesmedienanstalt (similar to the FCC?) and he had to pay a fine. This is an administrative procedure, and it was only brought before a court because he sued against the measure.
Anyway, Nolan would probably not fall under the law because you need to prove that he wanted to disturb the public peace in Germany or infringe on the human rights of German citizens – which could be difficult, if his tweets are in English and target non-German tweeters. The Canadian holocaust denier Ernst Zündel, on the other hand, was convicted of Volksverhetzung, because he published in German and sent his shit to German citizens.
@M:
That involves admitting that they were in the wrong, which is difficult for a person who has just made a comment about how someone else is in the wrong.
He will kill or he will incite. I know that the SCM is taken seriously here in the US, is it so in Germany?
I couldn’t even bring myself to read all his drivel. Can we just lock this bastard up, NOW? Like, before he gets a chance to show just how much the justice system is in fact stacked in favor of guys like him? Because I’m sick to the gills of Sovereign Shitheads.
@Lea:
Agreed.
@[email protected]:
It’s intended to encourage other people to take that action whilst not being legally complicit. It’s a dick move which people do because it works very well. I wish I could think of a solution which doesn’t impede on freeze peaches but there isn’t one.
As a bonus point (for them, anyway) the men who actually do the violence are generally treated as pretty disposable, both by the agitators, the killers themselves, and the public. How can you dissuade people from becoming cannon fodder when they’re so alienated from their own lives that they don’t really care about dying or being punished by force of law afterwards?
Of all the terrorist groups out there, cops worry most about getting shot by sovereign citizens. (I have no qualms about calling them terrorists. They’re avowed subversives who want to destroy the government of whatever country they inhabit. Even if individual sovereigns are not violent, they embrace a rhetoric that often leads to violence.)
I talked to a SWAT leader about this recently, during “Active Shooter Training” on my job. (These days, training office workers on strategies for dealing with a mass shooting is as routine as running fire drills.) He seemed to think that cops are most at risk from sovereigns, while friends, family, and coworkers are the biggest dangers to the the general public, especially women. This Nolan guy is a double whammy, and I hope he’s being monitored.
The threats against police and politicians might be enough to get him in trouble. In the US, people have been arrested for making threats against the police. Women don’t matter, so threaten and harass us all you like. But go after the powerful and those who maintain their power and you’re cooked.
Just wait. If/when Nolan does go on a murder spree, this will be sold as an anti-government act of terrorism. The misogyny will be swept right under the rug. Like the right wing news outlets tried to do with the Charleston killings by selling it as an attack on Christians.
@Anne
Um, no. Forced institutionalization is awful. Even though Nolan-Colon-Word-Salad is an awful person, that does not make ableism and support of forced freaking institualization an okay mess to leave in the comments section.