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?
@ dreadnought (& Bernardo)
Bernardo is a real expert on this so he can tell you lots more, but it must be remembered that the Nazi regime was incompetent both by accident and design
Hitler deliberately created a chaotic and dysfunctional beaurocracy full of idiots precisely to avoid any danger of a rival building up a power bloc against him.
There’s this myth of Nazi efficiency, but in reality they were just blundering and making it up as they went along.
As one (non nazi) German General put it ” The Nazis talk about a thousand year reich but can’t think ahead five minutes”
Of course incompetence can’t negate evil unfortunately, so if you’ll forgive the Godwin, that’s why MRAs are so dangerous.
ETA: ah, as indeed Bernardo just did
@ Alan
I wouldn’t say that they all were idiots, and “just blundering along” is too strong an expression. In fact, it’s always been one of the most horrible lessons of the Third Reich to me how so many very smart people were so easily persuaded to take part in unbelievably cruel and heinous undertakings.
I guess what you mean, however, is the principle of “working towards the Führer”. This principle (theorized by Ian Kershaw) means that the Nazi bureaucracy was organised in way that, although Hitler couldn’t be involved in all day-to-day activities, bureaucrats should make decisions the way they thought Hitler would. This, according to Kershaw, is the reason why Hitler could, to historians, appear as a “weak dictator” but at the same time remain in total control.
On the upper echelons of the Nazi bureaucracy, departments competed over responsibilities and areas of competence, so that in a very hierarchical structure, competition and initiative was still ensured. This was transmitted down the hierarchy; for example, for several years, there existed two cultural associations, one led by Goebbels, the other by Rosenberg, which competed for responsibilities even in the smallest towns. In these conflicts, everybody always invoked the spirit of the Führer, who only occasionally decided for one over the other.
I wonder…
There’s a possible motivation for these meetups that no one has touched on. I wonder if Roosh is lonely, and this is his way of trying to make friends?
I mean, he doesn’t seem to have a job, or any interests besides “banging.” That must be lonely. We’ve seen signs of him trying to reach out to new people online, but he’s been smacked down hard because that’s what happens when a person of middle-eastern descent tries to befriend white supremacists.
He wouldn’t be able to organize just a his-own-area meetup, because then it would be too obvious that it was for him. He needs to frame it as an event he’s organizing for other people, because what little power, influence & income he has is based on the image he projects of having solved all his problems by picking up chicks. But if he sets up meetings everywhere, then nobody can accuse him of being desperate or lonely. And maybe he can get some kind of ongoing social interaction to distract from the fact that he’s devoted the best years of his life to actively destroying every acquaintanceship he cultivates.
@ Bernardo
The fact that so may smart people did get caught up in it demonstrates the dangers of fascism. The Wansee Conference is a chilling example. I won’t be offended if you point out how many lawyers were present.
I do think hitler felt safer with chaos and incompetents though, the clever ones really triggered his paranoia. Ironically, by pushing them to the margins he may actually have given the space to move against him.
But yeah, the ‘what would hitler do?” Mindset was something very prevalent.
It’s interestingly though to try to draw an organisational chart of the top hierarchy with chains of command and lines of demarcation, it’s almost impossible.
Oops, gotta shoot, but morbidly interesting topic.
Ah, so now he’s doing what he fucking should have done in the first place?
I swear to fuck, do these people realize people can just go to any website at any time and read their shit?
You do not PLAN things in the open if you want them to be effective UNLESS you’re “in the open” plan is the decoy. Which it often isn’t.
It insults the intellegence, their incompetence at making “secret” plans.
@ button
You raise an interesting point. This may seem like a slightly divergent point, but have you ever seen the film “Sexy Beast”?
Ben Kinglsey does a magnificent bit of acting playing a really really horrible gangster. He’s the most foul mouthed spiteful hateful creature ever.
When Kingsley was asked how he achieved such a brilliant portrayal he answered “I just imagined he was the saddest man in the world”
I don’t have any good feelings towards Roosh at all, but it must be horrible being him.
@ Alan
What gets me aren’t even the asshole lawyers working on the Nuremberg Laws. What gets me are all the assholes who after the war, excused their deeds with “well, it was written law, I was only interpreting it”. Infamously, Hans Filbinger (who subsequently was shown to have sentenced deserters to death after the capitulation, but went on to have a successful political career) said:
That was, as you’ll know, what the lawyers and judges at the Nuremberg Trials struggled with.
There are a few heroes. I grew up in Ludwigsburg, where the “Central Post of the State Judicial Administrations for the Research of National Socialist Crimes” (yay, german bureaucracy!) is situated. Those guys relentlessly fought politicians, other judges and DAs, and post-fascist German society at large to prosecute the most evil Nazi war criminals, and they’re still at it. It’s an invaluable resource for historians today, and they still do some good work.
Agreed that ignoring doesn’t work. I’m more aligned fan of the feed trolls till they burst model. At least for those of us who have capability to mock them and stand up to them. Not victim blaming those who need to disengage for self care.
@ Bernardo
You’ll know better than I how many Nazis went on to hugely successful and ‘respectable’ careers after the war. Didn’t the guy who organised the Todt Organisation end up being some business guru in the 50s?
One of my favourite advocacy teachers (Irvine Younger) was an expert on Nuremberg. He was amazing to hear on the subject. Obviously as someone who does military law it’s something I have to study. I’m also very interested in the Tokyo Tribunal. That doesn’t get as much coverage, but a lot of the principles that people associate with Nuremberg actually originated there.
The Nazi obsession with ‘legality’ is both bewildering and nauseating (funny, that ‘own your group’s shit’ really gets to me here). When your objection to a particular Jew being murdered is based on the fact that the relevant legislation needs amending otherwise you can only sterilise him, rather than the morality of the situation, something is fucked up.
Anonymous have doxxed Riosh on their Facebook page
Blech. Wankers. He shows himself to be bad enough.
I apologize if I’m repeating what others have said.
You have to pick your battles. This is a very individual thing.
That said, an important reason to speak up against people who have ill intentions is to demonstrate your power. Maybe your power is in your words or your numbers or the passion with which you hold your convictions. Maybe all of these and more.
Sometimes you have to show people who want to grab all the power that they can’t get away with it–at least, not without someone pointing out what they’re doing.
And as far as I can tell, this battle is never ending. Defeat one group of fascists? A new one will pop up. Or the old group with a new name and a slightly different mission.
Planet earth: It is what it is. We can take courage from all those who have gone before us who have brought (some of) us, for example, the 8-hour day, the right to vote, laws against pollution, and battered women’s shelters.
@Titianblue
I went to Anonymous’s Facebook page, but I don’t see that they’ve doxxed Roosh.
What I see is that Roosh claimed that Anonymous attacked his Return of Kings website. But that was in 2013.
Have you seen this blog called Rooshnme? It’s also called The Blog of Cinzia le Strega.
http://rooshnme.blogspot.com/2014/12/roosh-now-journalist.html
In my Google search for Anonymous doxxing Roosh (I see no evidence), I stumbled on it and had a quick look around. It seems to be defunct, but it’s got some good stuff, including an article on the new Ann Coulter–Judgy Bitch/Janet Bloomfield/Andrea Hardie. Search for “Women Who Hate Women.”
There’s a proverbial phrase in French that says something like “Who says nothing, consents.” Which is all I have to say about the idea of ignoring these people.
Tracy, yes. Sort of.
This has never been a mystery. That’s why I have found this all so frustrating.
Literally, he announced some time ago that he felt people should meet in person for semi-regular get togethers, because meeting live and talking is different than talking on the internet. He had already gotten 4 groups that met consistently and so formed their “tribes”.
He then announced as a big roll out to every city someone said they would host one that they should, and everyone on the same day. (Doing this that way was pretty obviously an attempt to get some page hits and hopefully to make it feel like a big deal, and if they got some flack from feminsits all the better because it made people feel like they were being brave.)
People who keep saying “he never had the organization to pull this off” are missing the point. No organization is needed. He even told people they might be the only person who showed up, it just meant their city wasn’t ready to have a meet up yet. (The tribes are EXPLICITLY limited to <10 members and he actually recommends 4-7.)
Nothing has changed about the basic tribe thing unless the RoK people are super paranoid about Anonymous. They will arrange meetups if someone gets off their ass and does so. Roosh isn't in charge of them, he wasn't skyping in, he isn't using them to coordinate making rape legal, nothing. If some form, that's great. If not, no big deal.
In a weird way, I have come around to his plan backfiring now. He wanted some buzz and he got it, that's great. But the fact that the media and so many people completely misunderstood what it was (because he hinted at it being all super cool with his secret codes and such) may have ended up worse. By escalating all the news rhetoric into "Misogynists are organizing Pro-Rape Rallies" and the media buying it, the fact no rallies will appear and that maybe demos against him do turns the whole thing into "Victorious feminists shut down world-wide pro-misogyny rallies."
It doesn't matter that the victory is over something that never was happening (or proposed) in the first place. The media narrative is set, and even if he talks about how the meetups took place anyway, it will look like he is just trying to save face.
So I'm going to change my stance and count it a win in the end. The meetups will continue as planned, but in the end what people will *remember* is that he tried to have a worldwide rally and was stopped by protests.
If kicking up a controversy and being attention grabbing strengthens Roosh then the logical response is not to ignore him but to outdo him, which it seems most feminist groups have.
Roosh got a lot of press from this, but it’s bad press, feminists got even more press for their collective backlash and they got better press, feminists have attracted huge amounts of people to rallies and meetups this Saturday whereas Roosh has attracted a trickle that is now shrinking.
In politics when your opponent tries to grab attention or rally support you win when you effortlessly attract more attention and support to yourself in response. Ignoring someone is only the tactic when they’re so irrelevant that you actually didn’t notice their rally to begin with.
Some groups think that confrontation or attention grabbing through trolling are good strategies for building movements or support, that we play into their hands when we answer the call, when actually such tactics are politically equivalent to shooting yourself in the foot.
Note that PETA’s long campaign of trolling by being “provocative” has led to a long erosion of their support and seen them widely ridiculed even as they became more “well known”.
Believing confrontation or trolling are good strategies is often rationalisation on the part of young (usually male) members who are actually just charmed by the fantasy of enraging or fighting their enemies, they’re more married to the idea of trolling/fighting than doing the best thing for their movement.
Real support can be built by stunts, controversial proclamations or provocative confrontations only if these acts come from a place of genuine conviction in an idea and are a logical prosecution of your movements philosophy so that reasonable or at least sympathetic people can see what you did would ordinarily be wrong but your philosophy makes it right.
Example: Green movements in Australia united with Farmers to “Lock the Gate” against Fracking operations when the miners had the legal right to enter the land to start fracking, people sided with them because they came from a principled position of protecting the environment and the sovereignty of farmers over their farmlands.
Conclusion: “Play into” Roosh’s hands, he and his Neomasculinists are dingbats who will only hang themselves when given enough rope, they have no considered strategy, only a fantasy of how their movement sweeps the globe.
Kat:
I can verify this happened, as I saw it on “Anonymous West-Coast Canada”‘s FB page. The information’s actually been circulating around since last year, the heightened level of media scrutiny has just made it more visible. I think the address given also lines up with the Daily Mail article.
It’s also worth mentioning that Anonymous is probably responsible for the “cancellation” of those meetings. After a few failed attempts, they struck on a winning strategy: hit his pocketbook.
Alan
Yup. A friend of ours was in the Brit SAS during the 60s and was assigned to the prison for several months. In his unprintable opinion, he was absolute scum.
However, if you simply ignore them, you are allowing them to operate with no negative consequences for their actions, and they will continue to escalate what they do with no pushback until they actually do commit an atrocity.
So, I would think that, in this case at least, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant”. It’s becoming a win/win situation.
Sure, Roosh gets his “victory” and his “publicity”, but we get the added bonus of showing him and his ilk that we won’t stand for this shit, and it shows his followers that not everyone thinks the same way they do, and that most people find Roosh abhorrent, and that not all publicity is good publicity.
I think now you’d be hard-pressed to find people outside of the manosphere who will do business with Roosh at this point.
As much as I loathe the Daily Mail, and I feel sorry for his mother (if she’s not as awful as him), I did find it delicious to see that he does, indeed, live in his mommy’s basement. Not quite the jetsetting businessman sex guru he makes himself out to be, huh?
The amount of denouncement and delicious mockery against him, all across the internet, from multiple countries, fills my heart with the warm fuzzies. Even the Daily Mail commenters, who are normally fucking AWFUL people, were mostly laughing at him and denouncing his beliefs against women.
You know, I’m going to come out and say I’m really not comfortable with the Daily Mail going to his house like that and getting those gross paparazzi-style photos. There are plenty of days when you could get photos of me blearily stumbling out of my house in dirty clothes and I wouldn’t want someone trumpeting “Author who writes about kickass heroines is actually a total slob!”
Have you seen this? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3432531/Pictured-pick-artist-center-international-pro-rape-storm-t-shirt-shorts-door-mother-s-home-lives-basement.html#ixzz3zGpQInuf
Of course the Daily Mail isn’t the most reliable newspaper, but living in his mum’s basement sounds very plausible. I hope the death threats aren’t real, but that sounds plausible too.
I gotta be honest, as someone who also lives with family, I don’t feel comfy shaming Roosh for living with his mother.
I admit, there is a certain level of schadenfreude to finding out that Roosh isn’t this huge “baller” and “sex guru” he’s been bragging about, but it still feels kind of wrong to make fun of someone for living with their parents, especially since the economy’s in the toilet. : P