By David Futrelle
Was Men’s Rights attorney Roy Den Hollander, who on Sunday night gunned down a federal judge’s husband and son, also the man who shot fellow Men’s Rights lawyer Marc Angelucci dead a little over a week ago?
It’s looking a lot like it. Let’s consider some of the facts of the case as they are now emerging.
Den Hollander had a motive — professional and personal jealousy. According to the Daily Beast,
In one of his online screeds, “men’s rights” lawyer Roy Den Hollander made it clear he blamed U.S. District Judge Esther Salas for robbing him of a legal victory that instead was claimed by activist California attorney Marc Angelucci.
Den Hollander did not name Angelucci in his bile-filled memoir, but law-enforcement sources told The Daily Beast that papers mentioning Angelucci were found in or around the car where Den Hollander killed himself on Monday.
The Daily Beast has more on the case and Den Hollander’s feelings about it.
He was apparently targeting various people he considered enemies.
The New York Times notes that he had the name and a photo of New York State chief judge, Janet M. DiFiore in his car.
In a lengthy screed he left behind he mused about revenge. “The only problem with a life lived too long under Feminazi rule,” he wrote, “is that a man ends up with so many enemies he can’t even the score with all of them.”
Den Hollander had cancer and had apparently decided he had nothing left to lose.
“Death’s hand is on my left shoulder,” he wrote, “nothing in this life matters anymore.”
In both cases, the shooter reportedly wore a FedEx uniform as a ruse to get his victims to open their door.
This is the detail that absolutely clinches it for me; there’s no way this could be mere coincidence.
On the A Voice for Men website, a eulogy for the murdered Angelucci declares him a “modern martyr like ancient Saint Vincent.”
Now it appears that he was martyred by one of his own. Not only by a fellow Men’s Rights attorney but one who had once published an article on A Voice for Men and who had been described by AVFM founder Paul Elam as a hero. “[A]s much as I loathe the idea of anyone claiming authority on what a “real” man is, ” Elam wrote in a post on the site, “if I had to venture a guess, it would be men like Hollander.”
I would call this a great irony except that there’s really no irony here at all. The Men’s Rights Movement attracts desperate, delusional, angry and unhinged men (and some women fitting the same general description); it’s really not a shock to learn that one of these men decided to take revenge on those considered his enemies. Indeed, I’ve been expecting to see someone with ties to A Voice for Men lose it like this for years; I’m just a little surprised that it turned out to be Den Hollander and not one of the other seemingly more likely candidates.
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AVFM will ban people for the slightest transgression even as MRAs have always come here to whine about going through comment moderation at first.
A tragedy. Whatever you think of Angelucci’s politics, he actually went out there and did things, in the real world.
@WWTH
And I’m sure if they get banned from here for being obnoxious, they’ll head right on back to AVfM or r/MensRights to kvetch about “censorship.”
@painteyelash, Shadowplay
Hmm… so they haven’t been brigaded then. ^_^ Or haven’t learned about IP banning. I reckon Mr. Wright was showing you his big brain, and then disallowing the possibility of any poking holes in his arguments in case it wasn’t big brain after all. Uppity person, you. Questioning. Humph. If that doesn’t deserve a ban, I don’t know what does.
They’re a wee bit thin skinned, at that.
Not much fun to play with, really.
I’m still a bit proud that I got banned from Daily Stormer for ‘promoting violence’.
That’s like being banned from a vegan group for ‘being annoying’.
@Alan Robertshaw
If you don’t mind, what exactly did you say that got you banned? This reminds me of Robert’s story about how he got banned from r/GenderCritical for being critical and asking questions.
“I form grudges every time the wind blows, when will the matriarchy stop oppressing me?” But that’s the only problem he has, apparently?
I got IP banned from the Cracked forums for a PM to David Wong pointing out that they never actually deleted the articles (they just hid them by changing the year, like they did with all the old “haha, Gay is funny” crap they needed to hide when they morphed from bro to semi socially aware) they said they would after one of the staff got the boot for sexual harrassment.
Thought about mentioning it to the woman who had demanded that, but I found out a couple years after the incident completely by accident and it didn’t feel right to disrupt her healing over it. Dunno if it were the right call.
@Surplus:
Thank you for an excellent & informative link.
My only issue with it wasn’t your fault at all. I was trying to read without my glasses, and when I got to this stretch:
I thought “Panama Papers” was actually “Pajama Papers” and spent a confused few minutes on google finding out about a satirical newspaper and wondering what they had to do with global political change.
@ naglfar
“Let’s fight”
I suppose technically they had a point.
@Alan:
So not for being Amon Goeth, then…
For those who don’t know, Goeth is the lead Nazi in Schindler’s List, played by Ralph Fiennes. He’s actually a much nicer person in the film than he was in real life; Spielberg decided to tone it down because nobody would believe the reality, and would think he was overdoing things to make sure we understood the guy was evil. The link to Alan’s story is the fact that Goeth was eventually fired from his job as camp commandant for embezzlement and mistreatment of prisoners.
Let me repeat that: he was the commander of a Nazi concentration camp, and lost his job for being too mean to the inmates.
Completely irrelevant, but it’s a tidbit I found out recently and it came to mind.
@ rabid rabbit
You’ve just reminded me of another tidbit I found recently and meant to mention.
Remember our NAAFI discussion? I came across something about Spandau Prison. The place where Rudolph Hess served out his time. After Hess’s death the prison was knocked down and became a NAAFI supermarket.
The British squaddies named it “Hessco’s”
@Alan
That is both appalling and brilliant.
The fact that Goeth had to be toned down for Schindler’s List reminds me of what happened when George Clooney held previews for Good Night and Good Luck. People loved it, but they all made the same comment: the guy playing Joe McCarthy kind of overacted, didn’t he?
Thing is, there is no actor playing McCarthy in that film. It’s all archival footage of him.
Kinda makes you wonder how people are going to play Trump when they get around to making movies about this era. How much will he be toned down? I just hope Oliver Stone’s not the director…
@Rabid Rabbit
I’m guessing there will be a bunch of puff piece films about him soon or shortly after his death made by directors like Dinesh D’Souza. These will probably have him cast with a very masculine actor to try to portray him as some sort of macho guy. Then there may be some more factual or at least more realistically depicted films that will show him as the lying weak and cowardly man he is. The schism will probably last a while between films putting him in positive and negative lights given the nature of Trump and his fans.
History won’t judge Donald Trump kindly, mostly due to his poor response to COVID-19. However, his overall favorability will improve somewhat when his obnoxious personality is no longer front and center, and people realize that all that Twitter shit didn’t really matter that much.
What matters is what the President does, and (excepting COVID-19) Trump has governed as a reasonable conservative Republican. Indeed, one could argue that, given Iraq, he’s better than Bush. (Then again you can reasonably start to compare COVID-19 to Iraq at this point. But COVID-19 isn’t entirely Trump’s fault.)
@motte
Do you have a point of being here?
@Motte and Bailey
He’ll also be remembered for kidnapping civilians, destroying the economy, trying to become a dictator, the wall, removing the US from UNESCO and the WHO, and, depending on the next few years, possibly will be remembered for ending the United States as one country.
Suffice to say, he will not be remembered as a hero.
Because nothing screams “fiscal conservative” like blowing billions on a wall. And nothing screams “small government” like kidnapping civilians off the streets. He isn’t even a conservative as much as a fascist.
I think a lot of Americans will probably see COVID as worse than Iraq, mainly for the reason that it affects them personally more directly.
It isn’t, but he’s the main reason the US has had more deaths than any other country.
I don’t think you’ll find many Bush fans here BTW.
From well known lefty journal, er*, Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2020/02/01/trumps-deficits-are-racing-past-obamas/
(* In light of the other thread, felt compelled to stick that ‘er’ in.)
Unfortunately, I’m not sure that assertion is true. Plenty of people lionize Confederate generals who fought to maintain slavery, and Christopher Columbus is treated like some kind of hero who “discovered the new world” instead of being a greedy, bloodthirsty, genocidal murderer and rapist. Reagan is generally well-regarded in conservative circles despite handling the AIDS crisis as poorly or worse than COVID, etc.
So it’s entirely possible (if not likely) that at least a segment of the population will remember Trump with fondness and reverence. I would like to believe there will be a future where that doesn’t happen, but I guess I’m not enough of an optimist for that.
@Catalpa
Sadly, you are probably right that many in the general public will view him in high regard. They will be a minority, most likely, given his current approval ratings and polling, but they will remain.
However, I hope that the field of academic historians might be wiser, though I do recognize they too are fallible and may carry many of the same biases as others.
It is indeed true that Reagan could have handled AIDS better, but there was much less public health consensus about how to handle that disease – or even what it was – for a long time. For all the disruption it’s caused, COVID-19 is just a straightforward coronavirus.
But anyway, no. Taken as a whole, Reagan was a great president, and certainly one of the best, if not the best, since FDR. Historians agree.
@Motte
Lol
@Motte and Bailey
Well, I’m sure he was great for the ultra wealthy, and not so good for the minorities and poor who were supposed to get “trickle down” money. As is usually the case with Republicans. “Make the rich richer and the poor poorer” is essentially the GOP motto at this point.
Do you just expect people to not read the links you provide?
Also, Reagan was a horrible piece of shit whose garbage economic policies have directly resulted in the huge amount of wealth inequality that is plaguing the USA today.