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By David Futrelle
In 2010, men’s rights lawyer Roy Dean Hollander wrote an inflammatory piece for the men’s rights hate site A Voice for Men declaring that men might be forced to take up arms to defeat what he saw as the tyranny of feminism.
Several weeks ago, Den Hollander took his own advice, gunning down the son and husband of a female judge he had tangled with in the past; the son died of his wounds. Several days earlier he killed rival men’s rights attorney Marc Angelucci.
If you thought Den Hollander’s murders would have occasioned some soul searching on the part of the folks at AVFM, you would be dead wrong. Site foinder Paul Elam and others associated with the site offered no apoligies for publishing Den Hollander’s screed (or for a later post by Elam effusively praising him as a “real man”); instead they insisted to anyone who would listen that Den Hollander wasn’t a real men’s rights activist at all and had nothing to do with them.
On Tuesday, AVFM published a post by Gary Costanza referring to Den Hollander’s murder of Angelucci which somehow managed to avoid mentioning both his name and his previous connection to the site, referring to him only as a “demented person.”
Down the memory hole he goes.
Den Hollander – who killed himself shortly after his assault on the judge’s family – was not the only “demented person” in AVFM’s past.
You may be familiar with the name Chris Cantwell – he’s perhaps better known as “the Crying Nazi,” infamous for a teary video he put out after hearing that there was a warrant out for his arrest for several counts of assault at the notorious Unite the Right rally in 2017. Before going full Nazi, you see, Cantwell wrote a number of pieces for AVFM on such topics as IQ, the evils of gun control, and feminists “who demonize men and white people.” When, at the time he was writing for AVFM, I criticized his online harassment of some of his many enemies, Elam wrote a post defending Cantwell and advising me to kill myself.
Cantwell, not only a political activist but quite the gun enthusiast, has been a busy boy in the last several years; his rap sheet is too long and complicated to easily summarize here, but he’s served time for assault and currently sits in jail awaiting trial on charges of threats and extortion against a fellow neo-Nazi. Given his love of guns and his utter lack of impulse control, I think it’s kind of a miracle he hasn’t shot anyone yet.
Over the years, Elam has befriended and published several other men’s rights activists who frankly seem as unhinged as Den Hollander and Cantwell; thankfully none of them have acted out in the same way.
In Constanza’s post today, he urges fellow MRAs to “redouble our efforts” in the wake of Angelucci’s murder.
I would suggest that fans of the site do some serious self-reflection first. Is there a reason their side – and their site — attracts so many “demented” individuals? Perhaps this is not simply bad luck? Perhaps it’s because, to paraphrase a famous comedy routine by Mitchell and Webb, they are the baddies?
H/T — to Twitter’s @TakedownMRAs, who inspired this post.
@Snowberry
I am only a monarchist to the extent that I am not an anarcho-capitalist, or rather, that I think that the world may not yet be ready for my preferred form of governance.
Monarchism has the superior quality, in that it retains the concept of private property, but it centralizes it within the hands of one individual, who has vested interest in maintaining the health and wealth of the entire kingdom, for he owns it in its entirety. Democracy is plagued by short time preferences, in that politicians often sacrifice the long term for the short term in order to gain reelection; by contrast, a monarch must maintain his kingdom long enough to pass it down to his offspring, and in so doing, he is most unaffected by whatever passing intellectual fad or ephemeral complaint rises from the mouths of his subjects. Having been schooled in political theory and having been given the best sort of education that money and influence can afford one of his stature, he is in possession of a set of highly cultivated talents that bestow a degree of legitimacy on his decisions that no other person can lay claim to.
@Pavlovs House
Well, if he stops arguing soon we’ll know the teacher took away his phone for using it in class.
@skimmingway
Do you think there might be a reason most places are no longer monarchies? Could it maybe be that people don’t want it?
@Skimmingway
So your dumbass isn’t going to say anything about the fact your wrong about leftist people in the military. Good to know.
@Naglfar
Nah, he just has to hide it off the screen for the zoom call and mute his angry little puppy grunts he’s probably doing.
@Lainy
Skimmy’s choosing carefully what to answer because although he can’t help getting owned, he thinks he can control how hard he gets owned.
Anyway, I’m headed to bed now. I’ll see what’s happened in a few hours.
@Naglfar
This is the raw meat guy right? the dude who though sure power of manliness will protect him from harmful bacteria? Cause if it is that explain a lot.
@Skimmingway
Contrary to popular conservative belief, most liberals aren’t vegans. We just prefer our meat to be humanely raised and killed when we can afford it.
I will grant one thing: liberal cultures as a rule don’t invade other cultures. But they do experiment to find out what works best. Conservative cultures, on the other hand, do the same things over and over and over again and scream out in agony because after some point it mostly doesn’t work, and then invade liberal cultures and takes their ideas and stuff. I guess you could call it being more successful in the long run, but in the worst way possible for all involved, including the conservatives themselves?
No monarchy has ever gotten itself into ridiculous wars, had mass amounts of poverty or has ever been unstable or had uprisings.
“I didn’t mean those monarchies! I obviously mean a Platonic theoretical construct that, much like the Platonic solids, cannot possibly exist in this world. Jeez, don’t put words into my mouth. This is why no one here is worthy to speak to me. Now shush and listen to me or I’ll use your head as a metaphorical battering ram to metaphorically clobber the truth until it yields to my irresistible correctness.”
*me shoving spoon fulls of cake batter ice cream into my mouth*
Yeah no vegans in this house, especially not the cat and dog.
@skimmingway
It is true that you do not know of what we’re writing, but not for the reasons you seem to think.
Have you served in the U.S. armed forces or do you otherwise have knowledge of the demographics of the present-day U.S. armed forces?
And, *by the way*, there are among regular commenters on this blog plenty of armed forces veterans or people who are closely connected to them, as Lainy points out and exemplifies.
I teach at a degree-awarding institution that commissions a large number of armed forces officers. Many of the faculty are armed forces officers and veterans. Some vote for Republican Party candidates and indeed are conservative politically and (many) others are quite progressive, left-wing, support progressive causes, and vote for left-leaning Democratic Party candidates.
There are plenty of rigorously conducted studies of voting patterns among U.S. armed forces personnel. I won’t bother to cite any now as I’ve already spent too much time on you bibliographically (and I’m sure other intelligent non-troll commentators can find them if they wish). Obviously voting patterns aren’t the only measure of political leanings and preferences — but they are one, and one worth considering. Evidence by that measure shows there are plenty of leftists in the armed forces.
Ms. Pavlov’s House does sometimes find me coarse, but only in a way that pleases her; she does call me “manly” and I feel manly. It always amazes me that people like you seem to think that the ONLY strong, athletic men who live physically and intellectually vigorous lives are men who hold to YOUR twisted ideas.
I can’t say for certain because this is a blog and we’re not interacting in person but from how you conduct yourself, I bet, *leftist though I am*, I could still strict-press more weight than you, carry a heavier rucksack on a longer-road march than you, and take a position that you were trying to defend in a field exercise (even if you had the advantage in troops and equipment). (Also, if I did the latter, I’d be tempted to do it with a unit of all women soldiers…just to make you experience being defeated by them.)
I don’t think all those skills are the measure of a man. People are allowed to be who they want to be and who they are and that includes how the see their gender and how they identify. But even if I accepted the bullshit of people like you that traditional “manliness” is the measure of my worth, I *bet* I’d still be better at it than you. Just a bet. Yeah, ol’ leftist me.
Lol this skimmingway guy sounds exactly like I imagine I would if I was doing an extended bit as a reactionary loser. I applaud your commitment dude.
For the record, John Brown was both cool and good, and property damage is absolutely acceptable in the face of a corrupt government. Sometimes unfortunate, yes, but people are under no obligation to follow the laws of an illegitimate system. Thomas Jefferson was a liar and hypocrite, but that doesn’t make the statement “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants” any less true.
There are a lot of liberals here, so they might not share my exact level of tolerance for violence against the state, but anyone who isn’t a radical pacifist has some tolerance for violence. Simply pointing out that someone a person agrees with has engaged in violence isn’t really a gotcha. The targets and the specific reasons behind it are far more important.
The thing about historical monarchies is that an awful lot of rulers knowingly or unknowingly surrounded themselves with yes-men who would assure them that the people loved them. But most of the people knew nothing of the rulers beyond them being a name and a distant person who apparently didn’t give a crap about anything so long as the 80% taxes were paid. There were exceptions, of course, but for the most part it didn’t really matter which king/queen they served under, they were going to have difficult, miserable lives no matter what.
There’s no evidence that the modern equivalent would be any better. Dictatorships which are monarchies in all but name (as in, ruled by a dynasty) in the modern world are inefficient and often brutal. I don’t think that’s going to be an easy sell. Thing is, such rulers don’t owe their general population anything, only their vassals, and trying to go beyond that is a serious risk of said vassals revolting. Considering that the vassals collectively hold the bulk of the military… not a good risk.
@Surplus,
I’m not going to do a cut-and-paste quote thing here since I’m on my phone and there’s too much to do it for, but I am almost certain that the “Chivas Regal-chugging, PCP-addled thug” the troll was going on about was the late Rodney King. The riots that followed the acquittal of King’s police attackers did have a truck driver, Reginald Denny, who was pulled from his truck and beaten by four of the rioters.
Why the troll was pulling up something that happened almost 30 years ago and blaming it on today’s left-leaning folks I have no real clue.
@Pavlovs House,
Welcome back! I was just thinking about you a few days and that document about how to do simple origami Napoleon figures you wanted to see ages ago. Do you still want to see it, presuming I can figure out how to upload the thing someplace?
@everyone except the troll
This has been fun but duty calls tomorrow so off I go to bed too. It’s nice to see everyone.
Does Scildfreja Unnýðnes still comment? I did not see her [correct pronoun?] in recent comments.
Her troll take-downs were a thing of beauty.
@Redsilkphoenix
Yes!!! Please!!! That is brilliant!
Good thing Skimmy is a fan of Monarchism because I’m actually of royal blood and We, King Autistic Giraffe, First of his name, hereby sentence skimmingway to death and award all his worldly possessions to transgendered syrian refugees.
Non-troll-related:
A study shows toxic masculinity is damaging, to oneself and others.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0091743520302097
On AI and race.
https://phys.org/news/2020-08-whiteness-ai-erases-people-futures.html
@skummingway:
I … why … what is this? All the rest of it is ridiculously pompous except one word he says “fast-food joint” like a regular person would but then it’s all super-pompous again afterward … why the fuck … why … why …
It’s not named “<number> Rules for Life”, by any chance, is it?
I suspect not. Ludicrous self-aggrandizement.
I say, have you tried taking your own damned advice?
Tee hee. I think we have a wannabe Nick Land or Mencius Moldbug here! Skummingway, it’s 2010 calling, they want their dumbass “Neoreaction” back.
Even though you’d be sharecropping for less than minimum wage and forbidden from leaving the little patch of land you were obligated to cultivate?
Tee hee, he thinks anarcho-capitalism is a form of governance. How cute. For that matter, he thinks it can actually exist for any length of time. I think seaborgium might have a longer half-life. Obviously, anarcho-capitalism would last exactly as long as it took someone (e.g. Halliburton) to corner the market on armed mercenary services, after which that someone would be the de facto dictator and you wouldn’t have anarcho-anything.
What, antitrust? But that requires government and regulation …
@Snowberry:
Yep. Ancap, to be exact.
@skummingway:
Tee hee. You actually believe that, don’t you?
Do you know who will actually create a new civilization in these circumstances? And who created every past civilization?
People who work together, cooperate, and share resources in the face of a hostile and unremitting world.
In other words, leftists. Sometimes even outright communists.
Do you know what happens to manly man macho self-reliant individualists in such a world?
They die alone. Sometimes they can survive for quite a while on their wits and their weapons, but they eventually die, and they die alone. Except those who join into a gang under some warlord to raid the villages and towns of those rebuilding civilization. Those ones, of course, are doing their own (but predatory) version of cooperation and sharing in order to make an effective fighting force. And they also don’t build civilization. They sap at it as parasites, like mosquitoes, while remaining outside of it.
@An Autistic Giraffe:
Considering that his possessions probably consist almost entirely of multiple sets of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, that would be kind of cruel. ?
Skimmingway, (which pseudonym, let it be known, names the best mode of reading the œuvre of its bearer, if indeed one must subject oneself to such a taxing and frivolous indignity) I see that your manner of writing is in the tradition of one self-styled “Ragnar Redbeard”, who imposed upon the world that affront to literature, that shame of printers, that waste of paper, known as “Might Is Right”, wherein he, verily desiring to be perceived as intellectual, uses in praise of its intended referent the altogether ridiculous phrase “virile maidens”, which appears impressive and eloquent to those who are brutish and stupid enough to be inclined to fascism, but is blasted by the merest knowledge of language. A maiden is a young woman. One virile is one manly. Remember your Latin. “Hurrah for manly women,” quoth the monarchist!
Hello everyone, this is the ghost of Fyodor Dostoevsky. I’m temporarily sharing the body of Mr Giraffe to say the following to skimmingway:
Like Hell you will. But here, have one of my books that’s especially for you:
@Pavlovs House
Present. 😛
However, the dipshit’s idiotic comment has been dealt with adequately.
Welcome back, Prof. Missed your comments.
Scild drops in from time to time, hasn’t been around for a couple months though.
@skummingway:
So, if you simply replaced the title “King” with “Premier of the Soviet Union”, that’s all that distinguishes it from Communism?
Hmm.
Platonic philosopher-kings? That’s been argued about for 3500 years or so. The general consensus is that it’s a bad idea, because there’s no accountability to keep the king honest, among many other flaws.
Plus it keeps on not-working when it’s actually tried. See also “five-year plans”, “Krushchev”, and “fall of the Soviet Union”.
@Pavlovs House,
Okay. Just give me a few days to figure out the best way to upload the file for distribution on the web. I’ve never tried to upload a text file before; I’ve mostly done graphic files in the past.
Btw, speaking of monarchies, how well do constitutional monarchies like Spain’s do for ruling a country? My understanding is that set-up gives the common folk more of a say over what the rulers do than a regular monarchy does, but is that true?
@skimmingway
Except the conjecture you so assert does not meet muster when it comes to the reality and only shows and reveals your pseudorational anti-intellectual stance. Aside from the fact that the very phrase “real men” is such a nebulous and unquantifyable and arbitrary praxis that it’s frankly useless and meaningless: You need nerds and “eggheads” and other intellectuals in order to build a proper and well made fortification in order to best calculate and parse out where to build a fort, what materials to build it with, where and how to set the fort walls, what ground is unsuitable for placement of fortifications, how to reinforce it, what logistical supply chains are needed to support it (not only in terms of combat capability but also in terms of resources, camp infrastructure, food, water and petrol rations and even the general pencil pushing admin and medical staff). You literally need those kinds of people to not only build the fort and maintain it; you can’t be a thoughtless, meat-headed jabroni just plopping rocks and cement on any old plot of land without any means of not only building it or maintaining of the basic functions, operations and logistics to keep that fortification and it’s personnel even half way functional and operational. They very fact you malign and deride intellectuals and think only uncritical, beef-cake meat heads are the end all praxis for what constitutes a fort and it’s success; you clearly have the tactical and strategic and military acumen that Sun Tzu would consider “a paper tiger”: all though talk and brashness: but no substance or critical thinking and intelligence to back it up; and the master of the Art of War often pointed out how guy’s like you would try and cross a river to beard a tiger and get themselves and their men killed in the process.
Without the intellectuals telling you where and how to build a fort to spec; you would have a structure what wouldn’t even stand up to mother nature or a light breeze, much less any human army or enemy force. There’s more to building forts than just “lift sandbags and place them in a wall along trench”; have you no concept of logistics or engineering (the latter of which is pretty much peak intellectual field if an intellectual has idle hands)? A military force without such groups to use their minds, which are the greatest tool and weapon at a soldiers disposal than any arms of men: is little more than easy fodder for a soldier who fights smarter, not harder.
Also what is it with you and your ilk who seem to hate having a diet that keeps you from getting scurvy, rickets and constipation? Not to knock meat, but a healthy serving of greens keeps you healthy, scurvy free and prevents getting constipated.
This is a demonstrable falsehood both in terms of past and contemporary history, given that, in terms of past history: their were socialists in the ranks of the American Military during WW2(and other allied Military’s for that matter) and to say nothing of the Russian Army (all other problems with Stalin’s policy and self aggrandizing corruption of conventional Communism aside, and I’m saying this as a non-communist).
As for recent history though: tell that to most of my Air Cadet peers who went on to serve in the Canadian Army and Canadian Air force. Most of them were some form of left wing. I’m a New Democrat and a progressive and thus “left wing”, and I worked in the Security industry for about 3 years and enjoyed trying to help people in that line of work. Or perhaps all the left wing and progressive soldiers who are trying to denounce and stand against the systemic abuses in American Law Enforcement and even in their own military ranks?
Their are left wingers in the military; and you don’t have to be a left winger, a right winger or a centrist to be in the military. Your either deluded if you think otherwise or lying if you say otherwise.
Again, you seem to ignore the importance of brains, which can overcome and best brawns and fool-hearty guts any day. After all, it takes the more creative warfighter, wither conventional or unconventional: to think up, build and set traps, or developing guerrilla tactics and strategy of a objectively smaller and “inferior force” to be able to encircle and destroy a larger and “superior force”: heck their are entire military strategies and moments in history where this has happened.
Also for all your psudoscience propaganda waffles about “soy-eaters being weak and unable to fight/war because: soy… somehow”: Sun Tzu would have likely consumed a rather regular diet of soy based product; and he not only fought in wars, he studied and perfected the art of warfare to write the book on which even modern military’s base their tactics and strategy of teaching on today. (Art of War, anyone?) War is an ugly and horrid thing; but Sun Tzu was able to logic out what gained it’s participants victory or defeat.
Frankly; he would assess you and your stance as neither knowing the enemy nor yourself, and thus you and your like minded ilk will succumb in every battle.