Jack Barnes, a volatile American Men’s Rights activist known for his harassment of feminists on Twitter, is now threatening to unleash a new offensive designed “to strike fear in the hearts of feminists.” In a post on Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men bristling with violent language, Barnes declares that
we have our hands on the throat of feminism. This isn’t the time to ease up. This is the time to squeeze harder.
The ostensible subject of Barnes’ post is a several-weeks-old piece on News.Com.Au by Australian writer Kerri Sackville about a road-raging, red-Jag-driving man who shouted “slut” at her when she honked at him for blocking the road. Barnes adds to the abuse, declaring her a crazy, misogynist (!) “cunt.”
The real source of Barnes’ fury at Sackville is a campaign she launched last December to “name and shame” men who sent abusive and threatening messages to women online using their real names.
And that’s what leads Barnes to what he says is the real “point of this article,” a declaration of virtual war against “Sackville and her fellow feminazis.” He writes:
Here is what we do. We make it hurt. If they want to continue to do this then we make them regret it. They need to learn that their are consequences for doing this. They need to learn that we will extract a pound of flesh, figuratively speaking. They need to learn to fear retribution from us.
Barnes claims that this “retribution” won’t include physical violence, but he doesn’t specify exactly what it will include, merely suggesting that he will soon have the “tools” necessary “to strike fear in the hearts of feminists.” And by soon he means next month.
We won’t use violence. We don’t need to use violence. How do we make these feminists think twice before going all Gestapo on any guy who has the balls to call out feminism or individual feminists on their FemKKK behavior? Well I can’t tell you that right now. Lets just say a plan is in place and being brought into fruition as we speak. Expect it to be revealed before the end of February provided that everything goes according to plan.
Barnes then launches a preemptive strike on any even slightly ethical MRAs who might be “wringing their hand” [sic] over his mysterious threats, bluntly informing them that “this fight is about to get dirty. Deal with it.”
Barnes — using a rhetorical switcheroo common amongst MRAs — frames his threatened offensive as a defensive move. Feminism is dying, he asserts, and like many dying beasts it is lashing out against its enemies in a desperate frenzy. He predicts that
feminists will become increasingly more vicious. … MHRAs with lives ruined, imprisoned and dead is not outside the realm of possibility.
As he sees it, not just Sackville and her fellow Australian ally, writer Clementine Ford, but all “public faces of feminism” are fair game for “retribution” for whatever offenses he’s decided they’re guilty of.
You don’t get a warning. You all have engaged in this despicable behavior. You will receive consequences. Go ahead and whine and cry about the horrible MRAs threatening you. We don’t care. This isn’t a threat. This is a statement of fact. We will not use violence. But we will make you hesitate to ever do these things again.
Barnes apparently believes in some sort of collective guilt, making clear that he will hold prominent feminists “responsible” not only for their own alleged crimes, as he defines them, but for the behavior of what he calls their “mindless minions.”
This is not the first time Barnes has announced his desire to harass feminists into silence. Usually he remembers to put the word “harass” in quotes, as if this will be enough to transform harassment into something that doesn’t sound quite so bad.
Usually, but not always:
Nor is this the first time that Barnes has issued threats that he insists aren’t really threats.
Indeed, I myself have been the recipient of some of these non-threat threats. Last November, after someone doxxed him and his family, Barnes decided that I needed to be held “responsible” for the doxxer’s actions, even though I had nothing to do with that person or persons, didn’t know who they were, and didn’t even know about the doxxing until I learned about it from a video by AVFM head honcho Paul Elam a day or two later.
I made it clear I knew nothing about the doxxing or the doxxer (who later ended up doxxing me). I condemned the doxxing, publicly and repeatedly. It didn’t matter: Barnes declared the doxxer to be a “cult follower” of mine, so anything they did was somehow my fault.
“I promise you David,” he wrote in an AVFM post, “that for the rest of your life there will be nights you cry yourself to sleep in anger and frustration over me.”
Indeed, he wrote, if anything happened to his family as a result of the doxxing, he would literally show up on my doorstep for
a face to face in person discussion … No cops. No lawyers or prosecutors. No judges. No jury. No hiding behind a computer. Just me and you. …
I don’t know of any parent that would blame me for stomping a mud hole in your fucking ass and walking that motherfucker dry for what you have done!
What I’ve “done” is to condemn the doxxing that Barnes blames for putting his family at risk.
Barnes is hardly the only AVFMer who believes in this sort of guilt-by-non-association; assorted others rallied behind him on Twitter, repeating his accusations and defending his threats. The title of Elam’s video on the doxxing declared bluntly that I was “Trying to Get MHRAs Killed.” How? By writing critically about AVFM.
Elam’s bizarre inflation of my carefully documented criticism of MRAs into an attempt to literally “get MHRAs killed” is not only jarring; it’s ominous. By pretending that the writings of feminists leave MRAs, quite literally, in mortal peril, Elam, Barnes and others associated with AVFM can justify almost any actions they might take against feminists, no matter how sleazy or underhanded or even violent, as a form of self-defense.
Abusers who think — or simply pretend — that they are the victims are some of the most dangerous people in the world.
I know the SPLC is monitoring the AVFM site and are planning a big article about them soon. Don’t know the details but I know it’s going to talk about AVFM’s ongoing ugly intimidation tactics. So Jack is just handing more ammo to them. The tediousness of their hate is what I object to. Like DS said.
@Alan
The paper keeps saying “terrorism related activity” but it doesn’t elaborate. In fact, it says they’re “suspected” in terrorist related activities and I’m not sure how much I trust that since the person the order is for is half-Libyan. I am UNSURE about the legitimacy of the complaint…unless this is from a dude that eventually did stuff, but, like, still.
@ pandapool
That’s why they’re controversial. The order in that case was obtained partly on closed material. That’s material that isn’t disclosed to the suspect (although it is disclosed to a lawyer appointed for him) and obviously isn’t made public.
Usually closed material amounts to “the guy he told all his plans to is an MI5 officer”
But say the guy in this thread was in England and the authorities got someone undercover to pretend to be an MRA. If he told his actual plans to that guy, and they amounted to the use of actual violence, then the authorities could use that evidence to get a control order without revealing to the MRAs that they’d been infiltrated.
To add to the above,
The purpose of a control order is to prevent the threat being carried out.
Obviously if you let the violence occur then you can just prosecute in the ordinary way; but the theory us it’s better to stop the violence beforehand.
That is a controversial issue though.
@Alan
:/ It would be nice, since the control order is about a person or group of person being restrained from another person or group that at least the reasons and order were made public.
I mean, there’s a REASON why someone or a group wants someone or a group not around them and it would be nice for the public to know why, unless they don’t want to because it’s a shit reason like, you know, racism. And the evidence for the order should be public, especially if it’s threats and such.
Is that making sense or am I being really bad at law stuff?
@ pandapool
No, you’re raising all the same points lawyers do.
It’s tricky though. They try to make as much public as possible. But inevitably there are some things that only work if they remain secret. If they make public who the undercover agent is it renders them useless. Even making the information obtained public could identify them (“Hang on, the only person I told that to is…”)
There is judicial oversight. Note that in that case the court quashed the order twice.
They have curtailed the use of orders as a result of islamophobia accusations. Interestingly there was a documentary tonight where an interviewer followed a group of guys who had faced control orders but manage to fend them off. One of them did end up going to Syria and murdering a few people in those videos they do.
But horrible as it sounds, that’s not a threat within the UK so , although theoretically you can make an order where the threat is to do violence abroad, generally if people indicate they will be going abroad they let them and then leave it to drone strikes.
ETA: if they think someone may go abroad, undertake terrorist training, and then return to carry out attacks here, they’ll try to prevent them. Note the passport confiscation in the case linked to. But if someone definitley won’t be coming back (because they know they can kill them abroad) they’re less inclined to stop them.
@Pandapool
In this specific case, he was accused of coordinating with a specific known terrorist organization, which is named in the complaint. We can’t really judge if that accusation is true because it’s based on classified material. If the accusation is true and the evidence were publicly released, it would allow the group to figure out how the government identified him, potentially ending with a dead MI5 agent.
The problem, of course, is that the public can’t decide whether or not information should be classified without knowing what it is, so it’s incredibly ripe for abuse.
Doesn’t he have a history of uttering shit like this?
@ guy & pandapool
Ooh, speaking of our friends at Thames House…
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jan/19/mi5-comes-out-top-stonewall-list-gay-friendly-employers
@ guy
It’s also worth remembering that the suspect is represented by a “special advocate”. That’s a barrister with security clearance. The barrister is allowed access to all the confidential material.
Now you may well of course be sceptical that such people will not act in the best interests of their client, but instead be a lacky of the state.
To avoid such suspicions the government appoints special advocates from people who actively oppose the security services and secret courts!
This woman is one fine example:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/28/dinah-rose-qc-prince-charless-letters
Hrrm…
Hmmmm. So to Jack Barnes sending threats and calling people abusive names on twitter is the same as “calling out feminists and feminism.” Maybe that’s the problem, dude. Rethink the tactics. This mindset is why Lewis’ law exists!
It’s like gamergate saying they just “disagree” with Anita Sarkeesian and their other targets.
(On a side note, when I was typing feminists up there, I typed out “faminists” which I think would be a real threat to humanity.)
You’re not the only one. Even though they don’t look alike, they sort of do, because they all have rage-red balloon heads and bulgy eyes and snarly teeth. And they all sound alike, and all sound like overgrown 12-year-olds, to boot. I always get the urge to grab a bucket of ice and hurl it at them when they start spewing. I doubt it would have much effect, though, other than to make them even madder.
What is the statistics? How often are MRAs killed by non-MRAs?
@ petrovna
Well the fact that even the MRAs themselves can’t point to a single example would lead me to guess ‘never’.
Off topic — or is it? The mentality is the same.
Erin Pizzey’s dog is the only one I can think of and there’s certainly zero evidence a feminist was involved. Plus, the poor pupper was probably not even an MRA.
@Alan
I understand in those cases would be different, but since this was originally about the MRA, I don’t think we really need to worry about exposing identities.
Case in point, exhibit A: This page.
@ WWTH
Pizzey herself blames the poor dog’s demise on her redneck neighbours who had made previous threats against her and her mixed race son.
IIRC, she initially blamed it on feminists and then walked it back later. Of course, MRAs continue to blame feminists.
Poor doggy : (
Does anyone else get sad watching old movies and realizing that any cat or dog in the movie is dead now? It seems like a stupid thing to get sad about, but I do.
@ pandapool
Oh yeah, as we’ve mentioned a lot of the MRA stuff would be actionable in England on its face value. They make clear threats of violence.
But let’s take the case of this specific post. He’s made some threats but he’s been careful to qualify them as ‘don’t mean actual violence’. Now of course were somewhat sceptical about that, but it might be hard to prove in a court that he does actually mean to commit actual violence.
We could wait until he actually did, then it a just a normal prosecution. There’d be the actual evidence that you get in any crime.
But we were talking about some sort of preventative order. How do we get that? We need to show that it’s a reasonable suspicion that he might well use real violence (or encourage others to do so)
If we could be *sure* he was planning something then that’s an offence in itself that he could be prosecuted for.
But the whole point of restraining orders and control orders is they prevent people from being able to carry out things they *might* do. It’s a much lower standard of proof, suspicion rather than certainty.
So how do we get evidence of that? If we can get the evidence through normal channels then fine. We can apply for our order and make all the evidence public.
But what if we have to use an undercover agent or other covert means to get the evidence?
If we make that evidence public then we’ve blown the agents cover. We can’t use him again. That might be fine if there’s just this one thing to worry about, but what if we want to keep our undercover guy on the job to warn us of other actions the MRAs might be planning?
That’s when we have to apply to keep the agent’s involvement out of the public domain.
You see the dilemma?
@Alan
You can pop onto 4Chan and Reddit and see all sorts of people inciting stuff and see that some mass shooters have even posted on those boards and agreed with them. And you can trace similar user names and IP addresses to other sites like YouTube, Twitter, AVFM, etc. and see how they all cross over. Hell, it should be able to do it with just Reddit, Twitter and YouTube,. The easiest would be using their Facebook pages and checking all the articles and shit they comment on with their Facebook account.
You don’t need to go undercover for any of that shit. These assholes don’t even meet IRL. We ain’t talking about Deep Web although I’m sure there’s shit in there, too.
The only question is if internet evidence would be enough, even if it’s been proven to incite violence.
The stuff MRA’s write can be really damaging to certain people who are naive and might have anger and control issues even though they perhaps aren’t chronic abusers yet. Convincing them that feminists are actually violent could easily help them get to the more extreme end of the abuser spectrum.
I’d guess most abusers have a condoning ideology closer to traditional sexism (i.e., women are men’s property) or misogyny and misanthropy (i.e., people, but women especially, are weak, selfish, and cowardly). Getting people to think or pretend a group they already hate is violent or cruel has led up to some of the worst crimes in history.
@ pandapool
Oh yeah, we have quite a few laws about internet stuff. It doesn’t even have to amount to threats of violence or terrorism. If Barnes was in a England we could do him under this law:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/127
@Alan
See, why doesn’t America have comprehensive laws about the internet like England does? It’s so simple. Look at all that.
Look at that. That’s all of it. (A section of a larger work but all of it.) Simple, elegant – just pop that into some hate speech laws and it’s capable of fucking up most of these MRAs and Donald Trump’s day. Brill.
@ pandapool
Hey, we did give you loads of nice laws; then you threw our tea in a harbour 😉
But yeah, no unsolicited dick pics, no rape threats and definitely no menacing like the above.
Anyway, better get some sleep. Final throes of this silly legal project so not even getting my four hours of sleep. Been a lovely distraction chatting with you though.
Night night.