By David Futrelle
I thought I’d ease myself back into posting with a little note on a fellow we haven’t heard from in some time: Paul Elam, the celebrated founder of hate site A Voice for Men.
Elam, who announced his official “retirement” as a Men’s Rights Activist last year (it didn’t take), now presents himself as a men’s therapist of sorts, and an advocate for men’s mental health, despite having no professional training as a therapist and despite his support for Republican efforts to destroy Obamacare, which would of course deprive tens of millions of Americans (half of them, you know, men) of mental health coverage.
But the reason for this post today is the Tweet below, which was brought to my attention by the excellent @TakeDownMRAs on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/anearformen/status/890172845770362882
So is Elam trying, somewhat belatedly, to glom onto the Alt Right, the reactionary movement that has largely left Elam’s favorite reactionary movement, the Men’s Rights movement, in the dust? I mean, he doesn’t explicitly say he’s a white nationalist here, but he’s dogwhistling so loudly that you don’t have to be a dog to hear which way the whistle blows.
Elam has recently offered other, well, hints that he is broadly sympathetic to the Alt Right. He’s retweeted promo materials for an upcoming “Make Men Great Again” event headlined by prominent “Alt Lite” dudes Joe Biggs and Kyle “Based Stickman” Chapman. Biggs, a former InfoWars “reporter” and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist, regularly jokes about date rape and punching “trannys.” The Based Stickman, meanwhile, won fame in Alt Lite and Alt Right circles for, well, hitting leftists with a stick.
And Elam continues to retweet Indian “Men’s Rights” activist Amartya Talukdar, a Holocaust denier and literal Hitler fan (who also happens to be a plagiarist and marital rape apologist). (See here for my posts on this lovely fellow, who used to be a regular contributor to AVFM, and Elam’s unwillingness to break with him.)
He also recently posted this weirdly racialized, or perhaps simply racist, meme:
https://twitter.com/anearformen/status/883394561862623232
I feel so bad for all those poor white boys whose dreams are being destroyed by black women! Or I would, were I a white supremacist.
Still, despite Elam’s earnestly expressed White Pride. he does continue to show some sympathy for individual black men:
https://twitter.com/anearformen/status/878370502854692865
And despite the Alt Right dogwhistling, Elam’s central focus remains the steadfast advocacy for men he’s long been known for:
https://twitter.com/anearformen/status/875529332256624647
Good old Paul Elam, forever and always a huge piece of shit!
And read – the vast majority of teachers at the earliest stage are women.