The quarterly WHTM Pledge Drive continues! If you appreciate this blog, and can afford it, please click the “donate” button below. Thanks!
Earlier today, a Muslim man was reportedly shot and stabbed by three masked men outside a mosque in Houston, Texas. Yesterday, another Muslim man was beaten outside a mosque in Orlando, Florida by a man who reportedly told him that “you Muslims need to get back to your country.”
So I suppose that we should be grateful that Men’s Rights Activist Jack Barnes hasn’t, as far as I know, shot or otherwise physically harmed any Muslim Americans. So far, at least, he has confined himself to threatening them with murder on Twitter.
Today, Barnes posted a picture of himself brandishing a gun, alongside a threatening message aimed at Muslims, first on Imgur (archived here), and then on Twitter (archived here; screenshots of both here).
Barnes, a regular contributor to A Voice for Men, didn’t just retweet or recaption some tacky meme; he photographed himself brandishing a real handgun, and did his best to spread the picture and its threatening caption as far as he could online, tweeting the picture directly to Milo Yiannopoulos’ Twitter account in hopes that Milo would share it with his alleged 320,000 followers.
Seven hours after posting the photo on Twitter, Barnes declared that despite all appearances to the contrary he didn’t mean all Muslims. “Lol. No,” he Tweeted. “Just the terrorists.”
“Allahu Akbar” is not, of course, a phrase used only by terrorists. As Wikipedia notes, the phrase,
usually translated as “God is great”, “God is [the] greatest”, or “God is greater” … is a common Islamic Arabic expression, used in various contexts by Muslims; in formal prayer, in the call for prayer … as an informal expression of faith, in times of distress, or to express resolute determination.
This is hardly the first time Barnes has threatened people online. Feminists “need to learn to fear retribution from us,” Barnes wrote in an AVFM post this January, telling his readers 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.
Despite the violent language, Barnes insisted that he wasn’t threatening to physically harm feminists, merely threatening to deploy “online tools … to strike fear in [their] hearts.”
Last November, Barnes decided to blame me after someone who was very definitely not me, and whose identity neither Barnes nor I even know, posted Barnes’ address on Twitter. He threatened to show up at my door for “a face to face in person discussion,” adding that
I don’t know of any parent that would blame me for stomping a mud hole in your f*cking ass and walking that motherf*cker dry for what you have done!
Barnes has made clear that he intends his “activism,” if that’s what you want to call it, to intimidate those he disagrees with into silence.
Barnes doesn’t always remember to put “harass” in quotes, as in this now deleted Tweet (archived here).
After an angry misogynist opened fire at a Louisiana theater last summer, killing two women and injuring nearly a dozen other moviegoers, Barnes offered this chilling assessment of the event (archived here):
https://twitter.com/Jackbarnesmra/status/626838268173283328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
I think it’s fair to say that these all count as “warning signs.” Of what, I shudder to think.
H/T — Thanks to @TakedownMRAs on Twitter, a diligent tracker of Barnes’ noxious activities on Twitter who drew my attention to Barnes’ Tweet today.
IIRC this guy is a long haul trucker… might be wrong – but if he is, he’s behind another kind of very deadly weapon hours and hours a day – and with a temper like that.
He claimed to not be threatening all Muslims, but maybe he really meant “no tall Muslims”.
Ten years in the future
http://media.portable.tv/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Falling-Down-Movie.jpg
This is tangentially related at best, but I just lost my shit today arguing with a Trump supporter about “reverse racism.”
She’s the mother of a friend of mine, so I was trying to be at least a little bit polite, but I just got so frustrated. Like, I’ve spent so much time and effort reading research, checking statistics, learning history, and figuring out how to think and talk about things like racism and sexism, and here’s this person who doesn’t even know what privilege means and keeps interrupting me so I can’t even explain it.
I really want to make the world better. I want to fight the ignorance and tear down the defenses of bigotry. But how the hell do I do that when people refuse to agree on even the most basic shit?
At least I’m white, male, and cis. Christ, I have so much respect for people who don’t fit in those categories who can make it through a whole political conversation without flipping a table.
@Bina
That dog is lucky it wasn’t accidentally blinded or burnt! Funny how the guy manages to make it all the way through the fireworks bit only to fail on the dismount.
I’d wager that a guy who lights fireworks that close to his d$ck is declaring he should be gelded rather than brought to our future feminist apocalypse breeding program.
Dear American people: Happy birthday!
Dear British people: Happy treason day!
Dear Jack Barnes:
You might not be aware, but the Peshmerga accepts foreign volunteers to fight against the Daesh. I have friends in the radical community – particularly women, interestingly – who have spent a year fighting for them. They have English-speaking units and everything. It’s like a gap year except instead of building wells, you end human lives.
As a pacifist, I will not encourage anyone to take part in violence. However, I can’t help noticing that you are not a pacifist. You’re also not flying out to Erbil to take part in actual fighting against actual Islamist goons. This leads me to suspect that you are nothing but bluster, which is really kinda pathetic for someone who pretends to be as hardcore as you.
I’m a white man. You claim to speak on behalf of white men. Please stop claiming to speak on my behalf, because you really don’t.
I’m a member of western civilisation. You claim to be protecting western civilisation. Please stop claiming to protect me, because you really don’t.
Hugs and kisses,
– EJ
invivoMark:
There are some people who aren’t going to listen to what you say no matter what. even if you have the most perfectly well put together argument they will ignore it. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t argue with them: bigotry should be called out but also remember that It isn’t your job to teach them not to be bigots and sometimes that isn’t even going to be possible.
Every time I read about Jack Barnes, I remember that he has a wife and a young daughter. Who knows what other living beings this batterer interacts with.
If you’re into it, please send good thoughts to all those within his sphere of influence.
invivoMark:
If you’re talking about arguing online, you just have to accept that your real audience is the lurkers. For every blowhard you’re addressing directly, there are many other people witnessing the exchange without contributing. Some of these may be swayed; if you know your stuff, and argue persuasively, you can succeed in changing minds. Of course, you’ll probably never know, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Think of it like giving to charity: what matters is that someone is helped, not how you feel about it.
@ moggie & invio
Yup.
It’s like what we always tell aspiring lawyers in advocacy training: ‘You’re not trying to persuade the witness, you’re trying to persuade the judge or jury’
People have tendency to stick to their guns; no-one likes to publicly admit they’re wrong. But it’s the observers who can see who’s winning the argument.
[Ironically, when we do witness training, one of the key things for credibility is the willingness to concede (or at least admit to the possibility) when someone makes a good point]
@Moggie and Alan,
This was an in-person interaction. She initiated the discussion. We were a few drinks in, and a handful of others were also taking part (all doing their part to debunk the nonsense of reverse racism).
I’m annoyed at myself that I think I was the only one to lose my cool. One of the people involved was a black Jamaican woman. My friend’s mother insisted on interrogating her about her opinions and her life experiences to find any detail that helped her argument. That was problematic enough, but thankfully the Jamaican was much more patient than I was and shut down those attempts.
@invivoMark
Mostly, it’s limit recognition. You can’t make the world better. At best, you nudge. You do what you can to decrease worldsuck, and you keep your eyes peeled. 1 of these days, someone you can reach is gonna come along. And, nthing everyone else, that someone might be in the audience instead of the person you’re arguing with
msexceptiontotherule:
I must commend your use of the phrase “willy nilly” in the context of accidental dick shootings.
For once that kind of tweet got him a lot more ridicule than praise. For now at least.
I just read about the charming Mr Barnes here – a few minutes after reading this;
From the Anti-Feminism Australia FB page. Literally, they’re suggesting that we need another mass killing of women in order to expose how evil feminists are
That would be quite the burn if it addressed something I actually said, as opposed to the notion that he seems to have been stewing in his own gross brand of toxic masculinity so long and is so riddled with insecurities about his own manliness that he keeps making these performative displays of aggression to show everyone that he is totally, for real, a super-manly-man you guys. Hes not awful because he may or may not have a small dick. He’s awful because he posts public wank-fantasies about shooting muslims, women and whoever else in the face to assert his manliness.
I strongly believe that many of the people who fantasise about violently “protecting” their family or property are deep down looking for a justification to murder somebody. It’s pure bloodlust thinly disguised in heroic macho bullshit. People like these just want an excuse to kill. As others have posted already, Barnes won’t get a knock on his door from the cops, though. And if he does act on his violent language, they’re be the usual talk of a “troubled loner”, instead of someone radicalised by the far-right echo chamber.
This this this this.
@CreamyGoodness
Colloquially this refers to someone doing something to distract others from their small penis. Perhaps it has a different meaning where you live, but this is what PoM was referring to.
I don’t think anyone disagrees that this guy is stewing in toxic masculinity, along with racism and sexism and islamophobia. It’s pretty terrifying.
@Mish
This makes sense when you consider that apparently, the most privileged and protected class in the western world today is “victim.” So of course a group that’s often targeted by violence (victimized) is really in control of everything, and thus must be stopped. With violence.
It’s just objective bio-truth STEM logic, natch. /s
I don’t think they know what evil actually means.
In Britain, compensation isn’t exactly a slang term, but in this context it would usually mean compensating for feelings of inadequacy with empty boasting. I think this is a miscommunication.
Then maybe you need a quick primer on what “compensating for something” means in vernacular English. It means “compensating for having a small dick.” So when you say he has “compensation issues” you’re insulting him by insinuating that he has a small dick. That may not be what you intended to say, but it is what you factually said.
It is something you actually said.
eta:
Compensating for feelings of inadequacy … of what kind? What kind of inadequacy? If the inadequacy isn’t sexual, what is it, and why do we consider that type of inadequacy an insult?
From Wikipedia, also what I remember from my college classes. Anyone can have compensation issues, men or women.
No, Policy of Madness, it is vernacular English where you come from, not everywhere. I speak English as my mother tongue and I had no idea what you were riled up about until it was pointed out.
And of course feelings of inadequacy aren’t always about sexual issues. Even feeling “not masculine enough” is usually not actually to do with sexuality at heart. I do assume Barnes feels weak, or low status, or not in control of his life, or even unlovable – most of us do at least some of the time. The problem with MRAs is they try to gain a sense of control or status by bragging and trying to make others feel inferior. In the vernacular English where I come from that is called “overcompensating” – and it has nothing to do with penises.