By David Futrelle
A Voice for Men is trying its best to distance itself from Roy Den Hollander, the rabidly antifeminist lawyer thought to have gunned down the son and the husband of a federal judge and who seems to be linked to the murder of a rival Men’s Rights attorney in California.
But they’re going about it in a mighty strange way — by citing the violent portion of an article that Den Hollander published in AVFM in 2010.
In a post on AVFM yesterday, Robert Brockway complained that the media were making too much of that one article — and its literal call to arms.
Den Hollander wrote one article for A Voice for Men (AVfM), which was published on October 24, 2010 – nearly ten years ago. A quote from this one article has been widely circulated in the media as it attempts to link AVfM to violence. The mainstream media focuses on the mention of firearms.
Boy, it’s puzzling that the media would focus on the mention of firearms in a piece written by someone who gunned down three men, killing two of them.
Here’s the quote in question from Den Hollander:
The future prospect of the Men’s Movement raising enough money to exercise some influence in America is unlikely. But there is one remaining source of power in which men still have a near monopoly—firearms. At some point, the men in this country will take the Declaration of Independence literally.
Brockway continues his attempted whitewashing by pointing out that AVFM head boy Paul Elam later turned down another piece by Hollander allegedly based upon the premise that “the best way to preserve men’s rights is with a gun” — as if Elam’s rejection of this second post somehow erases that fact that they published the first one. (And, though Brockway never mentions it, that Elam also praised Den Hollander effusively in a post from 2011.)
The fact is that Den Hollander wasn’t the only one advocating violence in the pages of A Voice for Men. Indeed, the site once hosted, for several years, a manifesto by Men’s Rights activist Tom Ball, who committed suicide by lighting himself on fire outside a courthouse in hopes that his act would inspire other men to begin firebombing courthouses and police stations in protest of alleged anti-male bias in family courts. He wrote:
So boys, we need to start burning down police stations and courthouses. …
You need to flatten them, like Wile E. Coyote. They need to be taught never to replace the rule of law. BURN-THEM-OUT! …
There will be some casualties in this war. Some killed, some wounded, some captured. Some of them will be theirs. Some of the casualties will be ours.
AVFM did remove a small portion of Ball’s manifesto in which he offered specific tips on how to make effective molotov cocktails.
Despite hosting this manifesto in AVFM’s “activism” section Elam insisted that he and his fellow MRAs weren’t actually advocating violence themselves, just “predicting” it. As Elam explained it,
Thomas Ball represents a tragic, dysfunctional reaction to chronic, systemic abuse. There are many possible reactions. Some even worse than his. And while we cannot, must not, condone violence, we had better learn to expect it as long as an ideological war against men is allowed to make a battlefield in our justice system and within the heart of our own families.
AVFM took the manifesto down shortly after the Boston Marathon Bombing in 2013.
For another example of Elam “predicting” violence, see here.
Meanwhile, in addition to “predicting” violence, Elam has won himself something of a reputation for publishing assorted fantasies of violence over the years. Consider the infamous article in which he suggested “satrically” that Domestic Violence Awareness month be replaced with “Bash a Violent Bitch” month, celebrating those men who responded to domestic violence directed at them by female partners by beating the shit out of said partners.
I’d like to make it the objective for the remainder of this month, and all the Octobers that follow, for men who are being attacked and physically abused by women – to beat the living shit out of them. I don’t mean subdue them, or deliver an open handed pop on the face to get them to settle down. I mean literally to grab them by the hair and smack their face against the wall till the smugness of beating on someone because you know they won’t fight back drains from their nose with a few million red corpuscles.
And then make them clean up the mess … .
He cautioned men from taking his advice literally — not because he felt it was wrong to beat the shit out of “violent bitches” but because it
isn’t worth the time behind bars or the abuse of anger management training that men must endure if they are uppity enough to defend themselves from female attackers.
For more on this, and on Elam’s violent rhetoric more broadly, see here.
In short, Paul Elam is the world’s least convincing pacifist. He can’t disassociate himself from Den Hollander’s fantasies of violence any more than he can disassociate himself from his own. I can only hope that, unlike Den Hollander, Elam doesn’t attempt to turn his violent fantasies into reality.
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A bold accusation. If only there was a way to test this theory – would AVFM defend a murderer of women?
Actually – we can! AVFM has been around since 2009, and many women have been murdered by men in that timeframe. Has AVFM “defended” or in any way celebrated these murderers? No?
How about that.
@Motte and Bailey
Weird that they defend beating women then. Maybe murder is a bridge too far for them, but they clearly have no qualms defending other abuse.
That’s prevarication. It is clear from how AVFM covered him even back in 2010 that they were treating him and his ideas seriously, not satirizing and mocking him, unlike Colbert and the rest.
Also, I’m gonna give you the side eye for having being even a little a fan of AVFM, especially since your username is a LessWrong meme (about how to argue in bad faith, no less).
Are you … are you familiar with the Colbert Report??
As we know, AVFM’s articles about “beating women” were meant as satire – frankly poor satire, but nonetheless not prescriptive.
@Kat
Yes, unfortunately it’s true. However in my case, again not wanting to provide too many identifying details, the situation has stabilized due to permanent separation.
@Naglfar
There is no way you could know this, no apology necessary.
@Motte and Bailey
Only a little bit of a fan, eh? I, too, despise people who cannot remain relevant for longer than a few years. While one might look back at history and suppose that misogyny is timeless and also the bigger issue at stake, you have correctly nailed the real issue on the head. Relevancy or bust, and AVFM did indeed bust.
Personally, I don’t think that AVFM is quite bold enough to explicitly condone murder.
That said, one of their contributing writers has defended/celebrated the murder of Heather Hayer, just not directly on the AVFM site, as far as I know.
http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2017/08/15/neo-nazi-who-says-heather-heyers-murder-was-justified-used-to-write-for-a-voice-for-men/
@PoM
I recall at least a few conservatives who thought he was serious. Not sure if our visitor is one of them.
@Motte and Bailey
One of the key parts of the alt right is claiming after the fact that they were joking to reduce suspicion. I’m pretty sure Paul was at least somewhat serious when he said that the thought of assaulting feminist women gave him an erection. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been so obsessed with the idea.
@Catalpa
I’d almost forgotten about that. Really shows what kinds of company they attract.
It was “the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection”, or near enough to that. Which is conveniently just vague enough that he can claim he meant metaphorically fucking feminists shit up, like through the use of FACTS and LOGIC, instead of through physical violence.
It certainly does. Of course, the people who don’t want to see the pattern aren’t going to spot it.
Mmmhmmm. Let us consider some of the writers The New York Times has published:
Vladimir Putin
Adolf Hitler
The Taliban
etc.
Isolated demands for rigor all up in here.
@Catalpa
Yes, that was it. I paraphrased it for the purpose of argument.
And from there springs their Plausible Deniability™, which the alt right relies on. That reminds me, though, that the alt right really likes metaphors about violence. Their videos are always “Ben Shapiro destroys X” or “X owned by Jordan Peterson” or something to that effect. Very telling, really.
@Motte and Bailey
And your point is? I don’t see anyone here defending the NYT for publishing Hitler.
@Motte
Yes, the op-eds by Putin and Haqqani are giving dictators and terrorists an undeserved platform, but Hitler, oddly enough, cannot be counted among them:
From the foreword to the NYT’s publishing of excerpts from Mein Kampf during WWII,
That’s obviously not meant to be laudatory, and is meant to show the perfidy of the enemy that the USA was fighting against.
If you are cherry-picking examples, at least read them first!
The New York Times is, y’know, a newspaper. Their job is to provide information about the things going on in the world, which (often) includes people committing horrific human rights abuses.
I don’t agree with their decision to have op-eds from a leader of the Taliban or Vladimir Putin, but having a one-off opinion piece from a politically relevant source isn’t the same thing as hiring on that shitty person to be a regular contributor to your publication. (Though it’s still bad.)
(Also, the New York Times didn’t publish Hitler, they only featured an excerpt from his book. By that metric, David has published Paul Elam on We Hunted The Mammoth.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hitler-op-ed/)
Christopher Cantwell has written at least 4 articles from the site which are nigh-on indistinguishable from the other offerings on the website, which is (ostensibly) intended to be a place where everyday men can speak about their rights and struggles. It’s a bit different, but given that you’ve shifted the goalposts from “AVFM would never condone murder!” to “well, other places have shitty contributors as well!!!”, I don’t think you’re acting in good enough faith to acknowledge that.
I have to step away for now – I have a job, unlike many of you – but I’ll be back.
With respect to Hitler and the NYT: OK, but I would still consider posting a long excerpt from his book, with minimal commentary, effectively “publishing” him. There’s an important distinction here: the platform they provided is fundamentally his, not that of some anti-Hitler person who just quotes him a few times.
Well, AVFM did defend Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby. And they compiled a kill list of women they don’t like called Register Her. Archived here
http://web.archive.org/web/20110701151709/http://www.register-her.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
I mean, they tried to claim it wasn’t meant to incite violence, but it clearly was.
So, I don’t find it hard to believe that they’d find a way to defend a murderer in their ranks.
Are you, by chance, an actuary?
He’s definitely either that or a 329-year-old engineer.
Aww I missed the troll because of my job, how sad.
Don’t worry, Lainy, the troll promised to return!
Christopher Cantwell is a ridiculous attention-seeking troll with no ideology beyond getting people to talk about him. He used to be a hardline libertarian, too – are they tainted by association? Answer: no, because there’s no ideological line from his libertarianism (or his men’s rights activism) and his Nazism. Looking at it from that perspective is missing the point: Cantwell puts on these politics like Halloween costumes.
@Motte
Wow you didn’t stay away very long did you? what happened to that job lol
@Policy
oh I know they will. They always do. Kind of like a virus or a staff infection. I got a while until my next class anyways.
This guy sounds a bit familiar.
@Catalpa
He’s 329 and doesn’t have anything better to do than come here to defend AVfM? If I live 329 years hopefully I’d have accomplished more than that.
@Motte and Bailey
I’d say they are, if they didn’t call him out.
I’d say there is quite an ideological thread, as a lot of libertarians (in the American sense of the word as right-libertarians) are white supremacists and a significant amount of alt right people self identify as libertarians. If there wasn’t an ideological thread I would expect there not to be much overlap between libertarians, Nazis, and MRAs, but there is overlap.
Well, that’s quite the assertion to make, considering that libertarians and Nazis/white supremacists have made quite comfortable bedfellows before.
https://bennorton.com/the-libertarian-fascist-alliance/
And given the migration of folks like Chris Cantwell, Milo Yiannopoulos, Sargon of Akkad, etc from MRA-adjacent activities to right-wing idealogues, I don’t think that men’s rights activism has nothing to do with Nazism either.
Hardline libertarians are tainted by being hardline libertarians.