Correction: I thought this was at the Berkeley rally; it was actually in Austin.
Mike Cernovich has taken his clowning to a whole new level. Watch as “one of America’s leading jouirnalists [sic]” — as he describes himself on his website — is brutally assaulted by a bloodthirsty mob of SJWs at a Tax Day rally in Austin, TX.
Oh wait, he’s not being brutally assaulted. He’s being gently nudged.
But that doesn’t stop him from drama king-ing it up, repeatedly crying “I’m being assaulted” as evil SJWs continue their brutally gentle nudgng.
https://twitter.com/VicBergerIV/status/853464309669744640
Amazing that Mike is still standing after that, er, assault!
Christ, gorilla boy is such a pathetic, egomaniacal, hypocritical snowflake. I hate everything about him, especially his rape comments, his utter BS story about Pizzagate & Clinton’s health, & his lies about Susan Rice– which was a conduit for more racism & misogyny by the shitstains of America.
Cernovich can go to Hell.
@Axe
Not a clue, to be honest. It might hinge on whst happens between the unholy trinity of Erdogan-Trump-Putin. Erdogan has worked really hard to paint Europe as an evil adversary lately. EU membership is definitely out of the question, but with NATO I just don’t know what to think. To me it seems counterproductive to keep as a NATO member a dictatorship whose leader actively antagonizes supposed allies. But that’s just me.
Wait, Erdogan or Trump?
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
Yes.
Mike Cernovich is not fragile. He’s sensitive.
David, I’m pretty sure that Cernovich is just mocking Antifa.
@SFHC
Heh. Yeah, I suppose both. But the US is more central to NATO than Turkey. They can lose Turkey without any huge consequences.
EDIT: And while the US is severely democratically challenged, Turkey is 100x worse, of course.
Nobody has mentioned Monty Python yet?
Cernovich reminds me of Denis the anarcho-syndicalist:
“Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
HELP! HELP! I’m being repressed!”
@Brony:
Reading through Cernovich’s tweets, it strikes me that he seems to react very negatively to anyone attempting to understand him. Any description of his thoughts which isn’t a direct long-form quote will be not only rejected, but shouted down, which is the opposite of what one usually expects. This could be what you’re looking for – a form of weaponised empathy, if you will.
If I think back to my own cognitive behavioural therapy, this sort of reaction is an indication of some trauma somewhere. As such, while it might be a very effective way to antagonise Cernovich, I’m not comfortable with the ethics of it.
Interestingly, Carl Benjamin exhibits something very similar. I’m not a psychologist – is this just a dominance thing, or do you think there’s something deeper?
@EJ
Let me think about my answer for a bit. I want to stay away from diagnosis, and as I said I am hesitant about this. I just think more overt and rational social challenges will he necessary.
One can focus on the things he let’s affect other people without being deliberately clinical about it. Poking at things that could or should be addressed professionally should be avoided but may in fact be unavoidable given the problem.
You know more about this than I do, so I’ll defer to your expertise.
Yeah, I think it’s possible he’s mocking ANTIFA. But a corrollary to Poe’s Law makes it impossible to tell whether genuine extremists are joking or serious.
I’m officially starting to have trouble telling all these alt right bros apart. They all look/sound so similar. Especially if their main domain is Twitter which I purposely avoid I have trouble remember who’s who. Was there anything special this creep is known for? (e.g. Roosh saying rape should be legal on private property). Their most outrageous statements are the only way I can keep any of them straight. Otherwise, they are all starting to blur into generic Nazis for me. I mean I’m going to #resist anyway but dang I don’t know how you guys (David included) do it.
I’m pretty sure Richard Hertz is a sock for that drive by troll Paulie G that has been leaving droppings here and there. Same geometric shape thingy and for both of them, if you hover over the username/site link it says “deleted.”
Brony, Social Justice Cenobite
You have put what I felt about those incidents into very insightful words.
I may be mis-remembering the time line, but I recall that Dawkins posted his stupid comments about rape about 2 weeks after a woman, who had anonymously accused Shermer of rape, outed herself.
It seemed to me at the time, that it was a pre-emptive attempt to downplay the seriousness of “date rape” as a way to defend Shermer should any case go forward. “Well, maybe he did date rape a drunk woman but that’s not as bad as a stranger attacking her with a knife!!” In your words – Desensitizing people to the concept.
It was chilling to me that this implies that Dawkins believed that Shermer had actually done what the victim said (which Shermer denied) but was looking for a way to defend him.
Not that it’s particularly important, but I think the incident happened in Austin TX, not Berkeley.
Richard Hertz,
Stick to one fucking troll ID, would you?
What’s next? Hugh Jass?
And, no, he wasn’t mocking Antifa. Get real, and stop making excuses for this parasitic loser.
@EJ
OK, there are several issues here. Let me see if I can parse them and give my opinion. A lot of this is like a wish list and I can’t say that I analyze every person I argue with like this. I’m also not one to say that anyone has to do this sort of thing. I do think that it’s necessary though.
I’m assuming this is a public situation. Private can change the rules.
1) Do we have a choice?
I’m putting this one first because I think that it’s critical. Let’s take the worst case scenario. Bigot is a bigot because a bigot because of a trauma involving a member of the other group. Does that change the fact that these people need to be strongly socially opposed? Overtly and by name? I don’t think so. Ideally we take it into account for efficiency’s sake if nothing else but these people are role-modeling this shit. It’s more effective when the leadership is like them.
Many things we call mental illnesses are perfectly natural parts of human behavior that we have to deal with anyway. And people see professionals for things that are not diagnosed on a regular basis. It’s not so clean cut when there is no diagnosis.
2) Internet diagnosing.
A lot of this stuff is not really a diagnosis. If someone shows sensitivity to something and it triggers a set of socially damaging behavior that pattern is still there to be seen. If no one is going through lists of diagnostic criteria looking for something what we have is regular social opposition. If you happen to get a list of behavior that matches something it is important to note it for the sake of making sure that any opposition is based on the effects on other people and no one is taking advantage. If it’s possible steps should be taken to minimize exacerbating things.
Internet diagnosing is reasoning that someone must have something because it’s too difficult to actually face an action, position or belief. It’s overtly placing a label on someone. Getting to the label accidentally is a different matter.
3) Reciprocity.
Has Cernovich tried to understand other people? They can’t really complain if someone tries to understand them. I do a lot with this rule by mirroring troll behavior back at them (I try to be explicit about this pattern though, they should know why I’m shoving it back at them, and the audience).
4) Can’t fix or prevent what we don’t understand.
If they were not a socially damaging person I would stop, but we can’t stop. We have to understand people like him in order to prevent the damage that he causes to society. To me this is a smaller version of the right-wing in the US throwing a fit when the FBI wanted to investigate right-wing terrorism.
I don’t believe that it’s random. I don’t think that it’s a conscious decision to assist people in taking over a culture. But I do believe that group-sensitivity has benefited many other human groups at many other times.
5) Antagonism is sometimes unavoidable.
When you threaten a social predator’s dominance they often get antagonistic. It has to be accepted and prepared for.
6) Make the challenge fit the problem behavior.
The goal is not to create antagonize, but it should be understood that one will be creating negative feelings at the very least. The goal is to role-model for other people why this person’s behavior is a problem, and if it’s possible do it in a way that they may be receptive to.
The audience needs to see what you see. It has to be about the behavior, beliefs, actions or communications. It has to be about how those things affect other people (including the bigot’s supposed allies).
I can appreciate that your empathy sees his pain. But whatever empathy is has more than one part and identifying behavior that indicates sensitivity to something is not just seen by empathy. It’s seen by instincts that recognize the anger, disgust, sadness, surprise, and fear and determine how it connects to the harmful behavior.
I feel like I’m missing something. I may have more later. Feel free to pick it to pieces. This sort of think needs it.
Oh so he was just making fun of people for speaking out against being assaulted by literal Nazis. Well if thats the case then he’s still a asshole
@Hypatia’s Daughter
I don’t remember the timeline specifically, I was thinking in terms of consequences of what Dawkins did (and many more times after that).
I feel the need to find out though because it certainly is believable as I do remember several others maneuvering to help Shermer. I’m going to go sleuthing in my bookmarks. I know I have a lot of stuff saved from that time including posts marking it all for posterity.
Dawkins’s questions were of the same kind. No real connection to an actual problem to solve. No stated personal connection that he was hoping to solve with his questioning. But there sure was a need to be able to poke at sensitive things over and over.
No one does that for no reason.
I’m taking this site down. It’s almost over for you.
@Alan:
I think Donk was my favorite Walkabout Creek character from those movies. Not least because of his name.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufDTDUPZrag
Also, the video of what actually happened to Juicebro (or didn’t happen, rather) is frickin’ hilarious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HWtnsKVMoI
He’s yelling that he’s “under assault” while wandering around taking selfie-video, and bumping into harmless people at random.
Some “Gorilla Mindset” THAT is.
Yep, that’s definitely a threat there, @Richard (That Escalated Quickly) Hertz, you did read the comments policy, right?
Dave emailed
You aren’t doing shit, Dickie boy. Fucking baby.
“Richard Hertz”? What’s next, “Heywood Jablowme”?