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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.
Hey Jackie ! Lemme ‘splain ISIS’ strategy to ya.
They want the ummah (basically the whole, global muslim community. that’s right Jackie-boy, ALL OF THE MUSLIMS !!1!) to join them. To do that, they’re slowly building their image as the defenders of all muslims, everywhere. #Totallyyourshield, like. Thing is, it ain’t working right now.
And that’s a good thing ! So far, most muslims around the world flee ISIS like the plague. Problem is, right now they’re kind of in everyone else’s crosshairs. Like yours. Literally, it seems.
So what are they gonna do ? Why they’ve proven a strength of will that you certainly don’t show. They don’t pull out their guns while spouting paranoid ramblings about terrorism and whatnot. Even though they’re the main victims of terrorism. ISIS’s, and yours.
Thing is, ISIS is totally banking on them growing tired of your antics, and moving into their territory, to be shielded against morons like yours. That’s how they grow their strength. By creating, and feeding through attacks, a persecution complex. A persecution complex that a lot of people, including you, yes you Jackie-boy, contribute to.
So you see, Jackie-Jackie… you’re feeding ISIS right now.
Moron.
My best friend in the eighties was an Iranian Muslim and I came to know a lot of Muslims through him and in later years through others. In my experience, Muslims are some of the kindest, most compassionate, peaceful and hospitable people on the planet. I don’t know much about the Koran, but I have studied Sufism, the mystical wing of Islam, and found it to be a beautiful faith containing many truths.
The problem is not Islam. The problem is the US wars of aggression against Islamic countries, beginning with the 1953 CIA coup against democratically elected Mossadegh, and the reinstallation of the brutal Shah. Ditto for Iraq a few years later. Then, in the late seventies, Zbigniew Brzezinski got the bright idea to arm fundamentalist fanatics in Afghanistan to overthrow the Soviet-supported moderate Kabul government. Prior to that, Islamic fundamentalism was not even a blip on the radar, having as much influence in those countries as the Westboro Baptist Church here.
Then came W, and opened the gates of hell. I hoped that Obama would rein in US terrorism, but he greatly disappointed me, expanding his abominable drone strikes to seven countries, destroying Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and the Ukraine in the process. Then he proclaimed the right to assassinate any US citizen he pleases, and kicked off this brave new policy by murdering two US Muslim citizens who so far as I know, did not break any US law (Anwar al-Aliki’s writings for Inspire magazine, while reprehensible, are clearly legal under Brandenburg vs. Ohio, and his 16 year old son did nothing wrong whatsoever, except in the callous words of a Pentagon spokesman, “maybe he should have had a more responsible father.”)
I wanted to like Obama so much. He’s black, he and I share a hometown, a birthday, and we’re both White Sox fans. He’s intelligent and seems like a likeable guy. But Eichmann probably had his good points as well. For the reasons outlined above, I could not in good conscience vote for him in 2012 as I had in 2008.
I know I’m largely preaching to the choir here, and I don’t mean to be condescending by restating history most of you know. This rant is more to assuage my exasperation and despair when I encounter people like Barnes. And I wonder what will it take until large masses of people, including well-meaning but hopelessly partisan “liberals” as well as the most reactioary asshats out there, that the solution to the terrorism problem is simple if only our elected officials would:
1. Stop committing it
2. Stop supporting it; and
3. Stop condoning it.
@AlphaBeta Soup
I’ve heard most of that history, but I appreciated your synopsis. I didn’t know that Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, was the one with the brilliant idea to arm the Afghani Muslim fanatics. Or if I knew that fact, it was stored in a corrupted file in my brain.
Yeah, in 2012, I voted for Jill Stein — but I was sure that my state would go Democratic.
I’m on pins and needles about this election. The Republican convention will be hilarious, but only (1) if Trump loses, and (2) in hindsight.
Your solution to the “terrorism problem” was accurate.
The solution to our current political mess (a do-nothing Congress that works for corporations, resulting in a so-called democracy that more and more flagrantly flouts the will of the people when it comes to US corporations dodging taxes, single-payer health care, climate change, voting rights, and so on)?
Get the money (the unholy, obscene amount of money) out of politics.