STOP THE PRESSES!
Everyone’s favorite pickup artist guru Roosh Valizadeh has announced that he is cancelling all of the 165 meetups in 43 countries he had planned for this coming Saturday.
I can no longer guarantee the safety or privacy of the men who want to attend on February 6, especially since most of the meetups can not be made private in time. While I can’t stop men who want to continue meeting in private groups, there will be no official Return Of Kings meetups. The listing page has been scrubbed of all locations. I apologize to all the supporters who are let down by my decision.
Huh. Should we take him at his word on this? Roosh, in addition to being a terrible person, is also a bit of a troll. It wouldn’t exactly shock me if Roosh’s alleged cancellation turned out to be nothing more than a ruse, that the meetups are still on, and that he’s simply moved the planning for his meetups out of the public eye.
[EDITED TO ADD: It looks like this is indeed what he’s doing, organizing them secretly on the Roosh V forum, now closed to outsiders, at least according to sources with accounts on the forum.][EDITED AGAIN: Here are some screenshots (not mine) of his forums showing some of the places where they’re still trying to organize meetups.]
[EDITED AGAIN 2: REDDIT BOOGALOO There’s a stickied post in the Red Pill subreddit inviting all properly credentialed red pill alpha dogs to come to these super secret alternate meetups.]
If he really has cancelled them, the question becomes: did he do it because he was genuinely afraid for the safety of himself and his fanboys? Or did he take a look at all the protests being scheduled and realize he would look foolish if, in location after location around the globe, tiny groups of Roosh fanboys faced off against big crowds of mocking feminists? Hell, maybe he realized that in a lot of the locations he announced he was going to have trouble getting even one person to show up.
Will we ever learn where the pet shop is?
I wouldn’t go so far as to say Roosh never intended for anyone to actually meet up but I’d be extremely surprised if he hadn’t hoped/planned from the start to be able to make a big show of having to switch to covert mode. They’re very invested in the narrative that they’re the real victims.
Ta! Going w OH and Spawn – line-up promises a few laughs, should be good, yes 🙂
Hope the gaming goes well.
@Alan
You make a good point there because to all the racists and reactionaries there are no Syrians in merry England.
What I really dislike about the ‘just ignore him’ is that this is what women are told ALL the fucking time when it comes to the unpleasant and threatening things men do to us. Man grabs your arse in a club: ‘just ignore him’, man follows you making explicit sexual threats: ‘just ignore him’, boy grabs girls breasts in the playground: ‘just ignore him’. Being subjected to continual rape and death threats on the internet? Disengage, do not be on the internet (this one from Milo), be silenced.
And you know the reason we are told to ignore? It isn’t because the lack of response or challenge will reduce the abuse – it REALLY doesn’t. The reason is disempowerment. We are expected to register that sword of Damocles hanging over us that might drop if we tell our harasser to fuck off, get out of our face, or give him a slap.
I have fought back against many an abuser, both verbally and physically. I have been threatened further, but I have never been further physically assaulted. I concede that I am a large woman, and I think my size helps. But on the whole I think just about any woman can do this.
It doesn’t matter if these guys call us crazy aggressive bitches, ugly fat lesbians, vicious unstable feminazis – IT DOESN’T MATTER. What matters is that we are NOT SILENCED!
If you do not have that kind of personality fine – I am not calling a woman who does not speak out a coward or traitor. I am thinking of those thousands upon millions of women who want to speak out, but have been silenced by the unspoken threat.
Tracy – exactly!
I agree with Ellesar. My experience with bullying is that ignoring people don’t work.
I also agree that ignoring people attract more physical retribution than being loud and vindicative.
Re: ignoring
I used to live in a region with a growing neonazi scene, which became more and more organised and drew nazis from all over Germany to their rallies. At the climax they organised a march on 18th August to commemorate Rudolf Hess, traditionally a big event in the Nazi calendar because they try to frame him as the Nazi who wanted peace. As the town where Hess is buried had banned all events on that day, they tried to relocate it to this other town near where I lived.
The mayor of that town actually told the press and the Town Council that he recommended the whole town to stay at home and close the blinds, so that the Nazis wouldn’t have an audience. He actually called that “committed ignoring”. Luckily, everybody ignored him, we made sit-in blockades (into which the police, who obviously hadn’t been told to “committedly ignore” us, rode on effing horses). Can you imagine the picture: a German town, blinds closed, streets empty save for a bunch of black-clad Nazi Skinheads with their Reichskriegsflaggen and Iron Crosses and shit, howling racist paroles?
I am certainly never gonna tell anybody to ignore vile shit like that.
Also agree with Ellesar. Either silence is construed as consent to continue, or at least as an indication that the slime can continue (or escalate) free of comeback – or the whole point was to silence and erase you in the first place.
We see it all the time. If shitty behaviour is not called out, it just goes on and on and usually gets worse over time. Personally I am not good at calling out; doesn’t stop me agreeing with Ellesar’s point though!
I think ignoring Roosh might be the best thing to do because he will spin any response to meetups as persecution. He will aggressively come after anyone who confronts him or his fans.
I don’t agree with “just ignore it” in general, but Roosh is a special case.
I wish I could “like” Ellesar’s comment.
History Nerd,
So? Let him spin. He’s an ass and the same could be said of any bully. I was bullied and do you know what they do when you stand up to them? They run and tell what a bully you are. Every time. When they can’t control you, they slander you and use others to punish you for fighting back. They will lie to make it seem like you deserve abuse. Ignoring them does not stop the abuse. Only people standing with victims can do that.
You want us to stand up for Doosh’s victims or ignore him like what he does to women doesn’t matter as much as how he spins a lie? You that afraid of having a slim chance of looking bad in the eyes of a rapists fanboys? You know who will believe his lies? The same douchebags who believe him already. No loss.
Ignoring abusers is the worst thing to do. Ignoring attention seekers is the right thing to do. But roosh is both of those things! -_- if we saying this is a stunt then I’d go with the ignoring but it’s too late for that now. He got his media storm.
Nthing Ellesar, Bernardo and all the rest who say no to ignoring. Bullies thrive on being ignored. Fighting back sends them scuttling, and it’s the only thing that will. When possible, fight back with mockery; when not, fight back with demos.
And boxing gloves, if necessary.
What Lea said.
“Just ignore them and hope they go away” is the classic argument of the person in power who doesn’t have to live with the consequences of them not going away.
Bernardo Soares – it provoked a very strong image and reaction in me when I read your post – if the mayor had got his way wouldn’t those neo Nazi’s have felt powerful having the place to themselves. I would have read it as hiding, and if you are hiding you are admitting fear and weakness. If one can one must resist that!
I don’t suppose the Mayor was a Nazi sympathiser, but maybe he was worried about it all kicking off, and that that might bring more neo Nazi’s to back up their bro’s?
I used to be bullied too, and yeah ignoring them doesn’t work.
@Bernardo
Rudolph Hess? Wasn’t he the Nazi who flew solo to Britain, got captured, then denounced by Hitler as a traitor? Oh the irony.
On second thought, Roosh will probably spin anything that happens or doesn’t happen into a victory for himself.
@ dreadnought
He was a complete git right up to the end. When he was in Spandau he’d befriend the new guards and persuade them to give him cigarettes; then grass them up to the governor; seriously.
He’ll spin ignoring him into victory too. I really hate this attitude that we need to constantly pander to the dishonesty of reactionaries and bigots. No. They don’t get to dictate to us how we advocate for ourselves and our rights. They don’t get to set the terms of this conversation. They don’t get to make us water down our message lest we make them angry.
Don’t forget, he spun Forbes saying that his site didn’t cost Star Wars money as Forbes confirming his site cost Star Wars money. We can’t win in the sense of “damaging” him and his committed lackeys in their own minds.
However, we can win in the sense that our response can have a huge impact on the public perception. So, for instance, although I don’t know that the Canadian mayors could (or even should) have done something to stop the meetups, their public stance and support was powerfully symbolic. And of course, he doesn’t realize how much credibility he’s given feminists here — two days ago, even well-meaning but ignorant people might have been able to tell themselves that feminist descriptions of rape culture were exaggerated. Now, with this object lesson in hand, that’s a lot harder to do.
@Alan
I was going to comment on how remarkable it was that Hess — a man of such outstanding and imposing intelligence — managed to become second in command to Hitler, until I remembered that Hitler himself was intolerant of thought.
Maybe ignoring Roosh would keep the size of his fanbase down, but you know what? Even without Roosh, people that would be his fans are still going to be by-and-large shitty people. Let them rally around their “leader”; the net amount of shit is still going to be roughly the same, just maybe more concentrated and easier to identify at a distance. (If someone ever says “Hey have you heard of Roosh V/RoK?” and it’s not immediately followed by mocking laughter, it’s pretty safe to cut them out of your life)
However when we make a big stink about it and unequivocally make it known that him and his views are not acceptable, we’re letting everyone who is vulnerable to that brand of bullshit know that they aren’t alone. We’re making it easier for people to say “this isn’t okay” when confronted by one of these would-be-rapists.
@ Ellesar
yes, exactly, that would have been more than creepy. I guess the mayor (who, iirc, was from the Social Democratic Party) feared the conflict, the expenses from the police operations and cleaning up afterwards. To their credit, the town had tried to ban the march, but a court had decided against them.
A more creative reaction to courts forcing towns to allow Neonazi marches comes from another city not too far away, who, after a court had allowed the Nazis to hold their rally, simply organised a huge benefiz open air concert for free with some well-known bands. When the Nazis turned up at the train station, police explained that they were very sorry, but the city was “unexpectedly” so full of people that their rally had to be canceled due to safety concerns. The result: sad Nazis standing around forlornly near the train station, guarded by police, while everybody else in town had a great day.
@ Dreadnought
Rudolf Hess flew to England because he wanted to negotiate for peace with his “Aryan brothers”. Today, Neonazis claim that’s proof that Hitler wanted peace, although it was only ever about England (which the Nazis had hoped wouldn’t enter the war and which they saw as belonging to their race), Hess basically only wanted to avoid the opening up of a second front, and Hitler frothed when he heard Hess had done it on without his approval.
They also usually drivel something about how his death was shady, conspiracyJewsblahblah. It’s all a load of horseshit of course, but they’re Nazis, so what can you expect…
To the point about ignoring: there’s one thing I’ve learned about these Nazi rallies, and I think it applies to Roosh too: the most important effect of these demos isn’t the publicity or the image, it’s the coming together and cadres organizing. If you leave them alone, they can do so in silence. If we mount counterprotests, we can a) organize amongst ourselves and b) try to disturb their organizing. At the least we can take pictures, through which we can try to identify the most active people in the group.
“Meant to do that” cat washes the hinder-parts…and without objecting to doing so or mewling that it’s soooooo much work to expect from “Meant to do that” cat.
Roosh the much less than impressive, on the other hand…
Hey heads up! MRAs were made fun of heartily last night on The Mysteries of Laura, the tv show!