This is just getting surreal.
The Daily Mail — yes, that Daily Mail — has tracked Roosh to his mother’s house in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he is currently living. In the basement.
The location of the pet shop has yet to be determined.
So, yeah. The Daily Mail literally staked out Roosh’s mom’s house, and snapped a few pictures of the man himself answering the door, looking a bit flustered, in a pit-stained t-shirt, after he called cops to the house to discuss the threats he’s been getting from people around the world unamused by his allegedly satirical article advocating the legalization of rape on private property.
Meanwhile, in the House of Commons — yes, that House of Commons, the one in London — Members of Parliament have been mocking the size of Roosh’s … following. As reported on Metro.co.uk,
Labour MP Chi Onwurah went a step further than this, suggesting he was ‘so insecure in his own masculinity’ that he felt the need to ‘augment the size of his… following’ – prompting giggles from around the Commons chamber.
Home Office minister Karen Bradley joined in, adding: ‘I join her in her comments about perhaps the reasons why this individual is doing what he is doing, ensuring he is getting publicity, in a way perhaps he needs for other reasons. I’ll say no more.’
Wink wink, nudge nudge. Say no more!
Oh, and Anonymous — yes, that Anonymous — now says it plans to dox Roosh’s supporters. Highlighting the many ironies here, their announcement of what they call Operation Glasgow Kiss borrowed most of its language from Roosh’s plan, announced several days ago, to dox journalists who’ve written about him in ways he doesn’t like.
Anonymous Operation all can participate in. #OpGlasgowKiss#TurnAwayReturnOfKings #ReturnOfKings #RooshV pic.twitter.com/dxIO4PzrYF
— Anonymous (@YourAnonCentral) February 3, 2016
Also, Roosh’s mom — no, not really Roosh’s mom — now has a Twitter account.
Have I missed anything? I’m pretty sure I have.
What do I make of all this? I’m frankly torn.
I’m certainly heartened to see so many publicly rebuking Roosh’s truly abhorrent ideas. Even if Roosh’s call to end rape by making it legal were absolute, 100% satire, he’s written literally hundreds of other things just as bad, if not worse, a point I made in my International Business Times piece yesterday. (For many more examples, take a stroll through my posts on him in the We Hunted the Mammoth archives, or read through the posts I highlighted here.)
It is also a little hard for me to feel much sympathy for Roosh on the doxxing question, given that he and his followers are simply having done to them what he has already done — or tried to do — to those he considers his enemies, including, well, me.
Does anyone remember the time he launched a campaign to “destroy” (his word) the life and reputation of a female journalist by falsely accusing her of (anti-white) racism?
“How far lost is Western society,” Roosh asked on Twitter, “if fat, ugly Indian [name and gendered slur redacted] has a platform to denounce a productive, intelligent white man?”
In a followup post, he explained that
Unless she’s applying for a position at Jezebel, no respectable company will touch a toxic individual who has been linked to racism. …
It’s a slow-burn attack that will effectively punish these writers and scare their co-workers , whose income is low enough that they need to depend on corporate employment indefinitely … It won’t work on the big liberal writers like Jessica Valenti or Naomi Wolf, since any attention they get just helps them sell more books, but it does work on the young girl out of college trying to win feminist brownie points by denouncing a man for being “creepy” based on a bad joke.
And then he compared it with something he seems to have a certain amount of experience with:
Having your name destroyed on Google is the internet version of getting raped.
That’s right. He was comparing the smear campaign he was launching to rape — in what he saw as a good way.
I discuss some of Roosh’s other harassment campaigns, (as well as a violent and creepy revenge fantasy he posted on his blog) here and here.
So, yeah, Roosh isn’t having anything done to him that he and his followers haven’t done to others, with the exception of having actual MPs make unflattering insinuations about his penis in the House of Commons. Then again, if some MP were to call the target of one of his harassment campaigns a “fat ugly” c-word, I’m sure he’d be cackling with glee.
But at the same time, the public shaming of Roosh makes me deeply uneasy.
The Daily Mail literally staked out his mom’s house in order to get photos of him answering the door. He’s been doxxed; no doubt some of his followers will be as well. And I also have little doubt that Roosh is indeed getting the threats he says he’s getting. The answer to Roosh’s internet bullying isn’t to bully him back.
While some of the ironies of the current situation are admittedly a bit delicious — the man who preens on Instagram holding wads of cash turns out to be literally living in his mom’s basement — let’s not lose sight of the real issues here. There’s nothing inherently shameful about living in mom’s basement, or having a small … following. Indeed, jokes about Roosh’s penis rather trivialize the issues at stake here.
We should be exposing Roosh’s noxious ideas and behavior, not his mom’s address.
The real issues here are, I think, fourfold:
Roosh is teaching an abhorrent, woman-hating philosophy that encourages men to bulldoze past a woman’s no’s in order to, as Roosh puts it, “get their nut.”
Roosh is preaching bigotry — against women, against people of color, against LGBT folk, even against that familiar scapegoat, the Jews. Already a conduit for many of the noxious ideas of the “alt right,” Roosh seems well on his way to becoming a literal Nazi.
Roosh is a bully, using his followers as his own personal army in an attempt to “destroy” individuals he doesn’t like, most of them women. He was a supporter and enabler of the roving internet harassment squad known as GamerGate
Roosh’s own writings strongly suggest that he may be a serial rapist.
It’s that last one that troubles me the most, as it probably does most of you. If it’s true, I hope that the police return to his door, not because of threats he’s been getting online, but to arrest him. Will the current media firestorm over Roosh encourage women to come forward with specific charges against him? We will see.
You know that things are bad for a conservative nut job when the Daily Fail won’t protect them.
It’s so interesting that he complains about being doxxed when he doxxed me just recently over the summer. Ah.
– Aurelie Nix
Yeah…I’ll admit, I’m all for bashing Roosh, and the fact that he literally lives in a basement is a near-perfect storm of cliche (only funny for just how much of a dumb stereotype it is), it’s getting close to becoming wanton cruelty.
As much as I enjoyed the Daily Mail article, I wonder about the ‘he lives in the basement’ line. How would the Daily Mail know which bit of the house he’s living in/staying in?
Roosh is repellent and, according to his own writings, he’s living a half life full of loneliness and regret. There’s nothing about that story that needs to be embellished.
He looks amazingly like a younger Paul Elam in the Daily Mail pic.
Oh, and it’s also fun to see how fast AVoiceForMen has moved to distance themselves from Roosh! The circular firing squad is forming!
I’m not comfortable with doxxing Roosh’s address, if for no other reason that it’s where his mother lives. She already has to deal with her son being a notorious rape advocate; let her live her life.
I’m a little more comfortable with his public humiliation, but that’s more of a demonstration of “what goes around, comes around.”
I’d like to see him prosecuted and convicted of whatever crimes he’s committed, of course, but what I’d really like is for him to wake up and realize that he’s done things that exclude him from the status of decent human being. I don’t know that he’s able to do that. I don’t even think he’ll recognize that he’s been getting a taste of his own medicine regarding the humiliation and doxxing. I don’t know that he has enough awareness to see the similarities between what he’s done to other people and what other people are now doing to him. He’s been shown to have difficulty grasping that not all men will ignore a woman’s refusal of sex.
In short, I think he’s more likely to see himself as persecuted than he is to see himself as wrong.
The only problem I see is that his mother is dragged into all this. She shouldn’t be stalked by the Yellow Press. As for Roosh himself, no sympathy whatsoever.
nice
If I were Roosh, I’d move into a closet upstairs so I could at least say I do NOT live in my mother’s basement.
Public shaming absolutely is appropriate, and frankly if he cares about his mother he should get the hell out of her house because hes done a very good job of making a supremely tempting target of himself. Its regrettable his mother is going to go through a lot of grief, but there’s no way this ends that that doesn’t happen (either through her son exposing her to constant harrassment, or her son being carted off to jail). Which is something he should have thought of sooner.
I’d say “No, my mother lives in my attic”
Loudmouth dumbass manbabies like Roosh deserve everything they get. Like I tell people who complain about being filmed in public – “If you don’t want to be on the Jumbotron, don’t go to the damn ballpark.”
You know, I was thinking earlier today, when I first heard that Roosh had been photographed living in his mother’s basement, that doxxing is wrong, and penis-shaming is wrong. But I’ve had to put up with people just like Roosh, on Twitter, on Reddit, on Tumblr, on Facebook, at the office, on public transportation, at the coffee shop, etc. all day, every day for years. I hear every day about how I am inherently inferior to them because of my gender, and how their only wish is to violently use me and throw me away. I decided that savoring just one day of the world working against these motherfuckers would be necessary self-care.
Also, I disagree that Roosh being a serial rapist is the most troubling aspect about Roosh. Yes, that’s disgusting, but he is only one man. His writings have poisoned thousands of men into thinking the same way he does. It’s his following that’s the most troubling to me.
It feels like I’m watching two giant monsters made of poo battling each other for the kingship of Asshole-land. It’s revolting, yet strangely entertaining.
@ Octo
Hi, you in the media game yourself? I just ask because that’s the only circles I hear that term.
On the one hand, I know this is a classic case of “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them,” but on the other hand, making dick size jokes at his expense in friggin’ parliament is just enforcing the culture of toxic masculinity that created him.
This is weirdly comforting. Maybe he really did make up everything – including the self-described rapes. He’s so broke he has to live with his mother, yet he’s flying all over the world on these creepy trips? It seems evident that he made up a lot of the crap he told his little minions, wouldn’t it be great if it were all made up and Roosh could just fade away…
I’m having a classic case of schadenfreude concerning this sorry affair. I also am getting the feeling this is the beginning of the MRA implosion, and it’s going to be glorious….
I do hope he’s arrested. He’s a confessed serial rapist and doesn’t deserve to be protected from the consequences of his own actions (which is just what his “legalize rape” not-satire was really all about, anyhow). The idea of the police showing up to protect him from people who most likely won’t follow through on any threats they have made is frankly galling. He gets no sympathy from me, no matter how embarrassed and upset he is right now. Exactly how does he think women feel when they’re being stalked by the likes of him? I can guarandamntee you it’s worse. Because no one is threatening to rape him, are they?
I’m also a firm believer in turnabout as fair play, and in karma, so…Internet, do your stuff. I’ll just be over here making popcorn if anyone needs me.
Oh, and this song so applies:
What is interesting is that Roosh got no doxxing or offline harassment until the mainstream got hold of what he is doing. I am sure he blames this all on feminists, but I don’t think the Daily Fail and the BBC and all the US media that have given him publicity have ever supported feminism or feminists.
I don’t believe in “an eye for an eye” justice; if I condemn Roosh for certain actions, I don’t suddenly think they’re okay when they happen to him. He does post under his real name, though, so it’s tough to really consider it “doxxing” to figure out his address. I do hope (perhaps naively) that this doesn’t cause undue trouble for his mom, or any sort of violence against anyone.
I am, however, all for public shaming and ostracization. If he’s never again able to have a peaceful moment in public because everyone now knows what he looks like and what he thinks, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.
Also, fingers crossed that all of this attention will burn away a bit of his following. The picture being painted by the media isn’t particularly flattering, and perhaps “casual” fans might think twice about potentially being associated with him.
ETA: I absolutely do not judge anyone who *does* feel he deserves “what’s coming to him” – my opinion comes from a very privileged place, and I full well understand how others would feel differently.
Nah. It’s the end of Roosh’s cult, but Elam and Reddit won’t be affected. MRAs are good at circling the wagons.
you missed the best part of the Metro Article! They had a poll asking whether readers thought Roosh should be banned from the UK and the provided two answers:
Yes.
and
HELL YES
The fact that Roosh lives in his mother’s house is a testament to a mother’s infinite capacity to love her child no matter what. No matter what.
On a different note, looking at Daily Mail’s pix, I don’t see a dark BMW sedan parked anywhere near that house.