Two years ago, the infamous pickup artist Roosh Valizadeh announced that he was giving up his life of sinful fornication and getting himself right with God. Or at least right with a right-wing God, whom he apparently met in person after taking a megadose of ‘shrooms. (No, I’m not kidding.)
Now, instead of penning rapey pickup manuals, he writes posts on his blog with titles like “I Lived Most of My Life Under Demonic Influence,” “There is No Identity Without Christ,” and (somewhat unexpectedly) “Why I Don’t Trust American Dentists.”
Guess who else he doesn’t trust? The Jews.
Roosh has hated on Jews for a while now, and at one point he even got one of his tweets banned in France for promoting an antisemitic ASMR video. But he’s now getting serious about his antisemitism, blaming Jews for “most modern evils” from fornication to the Reformation.
In a recent post, Roosh reviews a book called “The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit” by a Catholic writer named E. Michael Jones, described by the Anti-Defamation League as a man “obsess[ed]” with “the damage that he believes Jews are inflicting on the Catholic Church and western civilization.”
Roosh’s book review — basically a series of long quotes from Jones’ book interspersed with relatively brief bits of editorializing from Roosh — blames Jews for everything from the Russian revolution to internet porn, and even for Roosh’s own fornication-heavy previous life.
If you decide to turn away from God, there will be a Jew to catch you with one of his degenerate movements, pseudo-intellectual ideologies, or money-making schemes. I fell for the Jewish trick of sexual liberation and paid dearly for it. Many others fall for greed, cosmopolitan living, new atheism, pornography, or the self-glorification that comes from Jewish-run social networking and dating apps. I must conclude that Jews are God’s punishment to those with weak faith. If you stray too far from God, you in essence become a Jew.
(Emphasis mine.)
In another section of the review, Roosh declares that:
Once you learn how to recognize Jewish names and physiognomy, it doesn’t take long to see that just about every moral degradation under the sun is spearheaded by Jews. There are certainly gentiles involved in such movements, but if Jews were wholly absent, many social revolutions and degeneracies would simply not exist.
There are a lot of similar proclamations in Roosh’s post. We “learn,” among other things, that:
Jews hate manual labor. … Unless you do manual labor, it could be argued that you are Jewish in character. …
In a society without tradition, rootless Jews can flourish. Their very first task when parasitizing a new nation is to break down the traditional order …
While many men have fantasies about defeating Jews or ridding them from the land, understand that they would never have gained power in the first place if people stayed close to God. Without faith, a man will not be able to resist the traps that the Jews set out for him, so the solution to constrain the Jew becomes a personal and then societal decision of faith.
Roosh is really cranking the antisemitism up to eleven.
Couldn’t he have found a God who was somewhat less of an asshole?
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@Ooglyboggles:
Exactly! So clearly you should hate da ((jjjjjjjooooooooooooozzzzzz))))) instead of hating Roosh.
He’s still pro-Likud Israel, though, right?
@Lumipuna
I have observed this, see also some occult Nazis such as the Creativity movement.
I am not a historian, but from what I know the main reason Jews left the Mediterranean was because of persecution. Previously the Mediterranean had been controlled by Muslim states which had been mostly tolerant of Jews, but the Spanish Inquisition forced Jews and Muslims out so many took root in Northern Europe.
Mostly those related to handling money. Because it was considered sinful for Christians to be moneylenders or bankers but was necessary, Jews were allowed to survive in that niche. Like Cyborgette mentioned above, this led to the stereotype that Jews are rich and greedy.
@Buttercup:
His error there was in thinking the sex was his sin. It wasn’t. His treating other people as things to be used and discarded (whether for sex or for other purposes) was the sin, and he still holds that attitude, as evidenced by his continuing to judge other people based on their religion, sex, or other characteristics. Thus, the moral decay continues unabated.
@surplus
I’d say his sin was raping women who didn’t want to have sex with him and then blog about and encourage other people to rape women who are two afraid to physically fight back or to drunk to.
Ann Hatzakis:
IIRC, Roosh identifies as Armenian Orthodox (ie. not “Orthodox” in the usual English sense) due to a family connection, but I wonder if he actually attends a relevant church, or any church, since becoming born again. As a Christian, he could be mostly influenced by whatever confirmation he can find for his prejudices online.
Roosh is the herpes simplex of the MRA world. Whenever society decides they’ve had enough of his particular brand of bullshit, he shape shifts and starts the grift all over again. From PUA to MRA to born-again internet nazi. I have to admit I’m mildly curious to see what his next incarnation will be.
Naglfar:
Ok. That’s a little surprising – You’d think they’d rather have gone towards North Africa when their homes were taken over by the reconquista.
That said, I know Jews have been often driven out of places, and then gone wherever they could.
That makes sense, though I don’t suppose all or most Jews traditionally worked in the “forbidden” industries? AFAIK Central Europe had a rather substantial Jewish population that wasn’t even entirely limited to cities.
Meanwhile, Sweden apparently rejected any Jews in medieval and early modern era, while the necessary money lending was done by ethnic German merchants of the Hanseatic league.
Gross, but not surprising.
Not long ago he was all, “Hey, feminists, you support ‘The Muslims’ so you’d like to be repressed by Sharia law, huh, huh?”
…and still some people [thinking of one Quebec journalist, but maybe no one’s heard of her here] pretend that Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are so different – I mean, they may have different origins and tropes, but the rhetoric, esp. among today’s white supremacists, is hard to distinguish.
Oh yeah, and the racists he’s trying to appeal to could easily say he’s not white enough for them (he’s Persian & Armenian, I think?) But then they could use him as a shield or token minority.
Anyway, these parts are particularly silly:
Granted, not everyone who identifies as Jewish is religious, but what does he think religious Jews believe in, the flying spaghetti monster??
Jesus was a Jewish carpenter. Isn’t carpentry manual labor? I’m confused. Roosh and his acolytes never make sense.
@Lumipuna
It may also be worth noting that the Armenian Apostolic Church has some significant differences from other sects of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, but I also would imagine Roosh has picked and chosen what to follow to maximize misogyny and minimize responsibility.
Again, not a historian, but I would imagine they didn’t go to North Africa because that would require crossing the Mediterranean, and hence boat travel, which would be expensive.
@epitome
So far the racists don’t like him much. It appears most of them do not consider Armenians to be white and certainly not Persians. It’s also worth noting that a lot of white supremacists seem to conflate Armenians and Jews for some reason, for instance during GamerGate when they made antisemitic jokes and memes about Anita Sarkeesian. Maybe because both are minorities that have cultures and languages that differentiate them from others and have historically been diasporic?
I’ve heard a significant number of Christians who believe that Muslims worship a different god than Jews or Christians, evidently they don’t realize that Allah is an Arabic word for the same God as other Abrahamic religions. That said, I haven’t heard as many that think Jews worship a different god than Christians. Though as you said, antisemitism and Islamophobia have a lot in common, so it doesn’t really surprise me that Roosh thinks this.
@ Katherine the adequate
The gospels peg Jesus (and Joseph) as Tekton.
That word appears to mean craftsman or artisan. It was used to include carpenters, but also people like builders and engineers (but not metal workers). Interestingly it can also mean teacher.
There’s various theories about why it got particularly associated with carpentry in Jesus’ case. Including some, not generally accepted, theories that tekton/carpenter was a sort of nickname for people learned in the Torah and religious matters generally. Although that meaning is used by St Paul.
https://biblehub.com/2_timothy/2-15.htm
ETA: This is making me all nostalgic for my days of RE ‘A’ Level. One of the modules was “The Synoptic Gospels”.
Which prompted the immediate question “Please sir, what does synoptic mean?”
One of the things I am proud of as a parent is having inoculated my children against the virus of anti-Semitism (as my own parents did for me). My older son has a generally dim view of organized religion, but makes an exception for Judaism.
Jews, as he puts it, don’t mind if you’re not Jewish, they’d just prefer that you not mind that they are. The other Abrahamic faiths would do well to follow their example.
@Naglfar
IIRC there was a trend towards intolerance in North African Islam at that time as well, which made many Muslim states no more welcoming of Jews than the Christian states.
IME they claim that last bit is a lie aimed at deceiving Christians. Apparently an islamophobic anthropologist of the early 20th century claimed that Allah was the name of a pre-Muslim moon god. I cannot easily determine why, but a subset of Evangelicals have been passing the story around ever since.
@Robert
Funnily enough, the fact that Quakers do not proselytize was one of the things that drew me to them.
@Dalillama
IIRC, the “Muslims worship a separate God” business dates at least back to the Crusades. “Termagant” was one of the names bandied about.
All the satanist I have seen so far were of the “ironic satanist who are mostly anti-christian” part, never have seen one who actually worshipped Satan in more than words. They also all were asshole. Most were assholes of the atheist variety, the one that think that being atheist make them inherently superior and justify any amount of disrespect to other religions. A few were of the fascist variety. (apparently thoses are on the upswing ?)
The idea that muslims don’t venerate the same god is the easiest way to justify not converting to islam, so of course idiots will latch on the idea. The behavior of their prophet is also *rather* different from Jesus, but on the other hand, most modern christians are closer to the behavior of Muhammad than the behavior of the Christ.
I have a feeling that the current pope and his predecessors are hard at work at trying to row back christianity to be closer to its original message. Given the difference between locals sermons as reported by my family and the pope declaration, that isn’t going too well.
So, Roosh is going through a midlife crisis, and has hit the wall. He behaves as if he’s the only human on earth to age, and to change as he ages.
I don’t know whether to believe that he genuinely had a spiritual/religious experience while under the influence of magic mushrooms. Much of his life, it seems to me, is lived online. Maybe he realized that he was getting too long in the tooth to market himself as a pickup artist to young men, and so he made the big switcheroo, to spiritual guru/MRA elder?
Test
@Naglfar
Yeah I completely agree, he may attribute to deeper causes but this whole turnaround is down to his ego not being able to cope with aging.
Almost certainly, and even if you didn’t know he’s actually raped people, his tactics were always so highly and openly reliant on coercion and getting girls drunk that it’s clear he was no Casanova.
I guess, for me anyway, that if he was a nice person he would be in the category of Ordinary Handsome – as in, quite pleasant looking. When I’ve seen in on screen though he is extremely off-putting because there’s something in my lizard brain that reacts to badly to him. He looks, moves and sounds like a predator, with an extra unpleasant layer of pathetic self pity.
@Ohlmann
From my (admittedly limited) knowledge, there are 2 kinds of satanists: theistic and atheistic. Most are atheistic and don’t worship Satan, but view Satan as some sort of symbol of evil and chaos.
@Dormousing_it
I also feel this is the more likely story. Maybe shrooms played a role, but it sounds like this is the main reason.
@Lollypop
Definitely. If he weren’t a pickup artist I’d say he’s about average, but he’s just overwhelmingly creepy in his behavior.
@ Dalillama:
IIRC, there’s a substantial number of conservative Protestants who like to insist Catholics are all secretly Pagans worshipping a goddess in the guise of the Virgin Mary. (I’ve also met at least one Pagan ex-Catholic who likes to point out the prevalence of Marian-iconography, but in more of an ironic “they’re so close to getting it right” kind of way)
@naglfar: one organization — I think the Church of Satan in the US — seems to exist solely to challenge laws that illegally favour Christianity.
I suspect strong overlap between its members and “asshole atheism” though I don’t think they view Satan as anything other than religious figure that Christian have to accept as “valid” as opposed to something like the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
@ Katherine the adequate
The gospels peg Jesus (and Joseph) as Tekton.
That word appears to mean craftsman or artisan. It was used to include carpenters, but also people like builders and engineers (but not metal workers). Interestingly it can also mean teacher.
There’s various theories about why it got particularly associated with carpentry in Jesus’ case. Including some, not generally accepted, theories that tekton/carpenter was a sort of nickname for people learned in the Torah and religious matters generally. Although that meaning is used by St Paul.
https://biblehub.com/2_timothy/2-15.htm
ETA: This is making me all nostalgic for my days of RE ‘A’ Level. One of the modules was “The Synoptic Gospels”.
Which prompted the immediate question “Please sir, what does synoptic mean?”
@Naglfar
Sounds about right. He was depressed after his sister’s death, and went into a mid-life/identity crisis when rapey seduction failed to fill the void. He did shrooms in a park with a friend, saw trees moving and had an out of body experience, but it didn’t produce any larger awareness or empathy beyond “whoa, I’m divine and special!” The shrooms told him exactly what he wanted to hear, nothing more.
In that respect, he’s like every other white-dude psychedelic tourist who chases after mind-altering experiences, but only ones that won’t challenge him in any way or require him to do hard self-examination. All it did was reaffirm his belief that he’s the center of the universe.
He’s still a selfish, predatory prick, it’s just that God is now backing him.
@SpecialFFrog
Are you maybe thinking of The Satanic Temple? They’re the ones who performed a pink mass to make Fred Phelps’s mothers ghost gay and who sponsored the Baphomet statue outside the Oklahoma state house. The Church of Satan is a different organization, and they don’t get along well.
@Buttercup
Exactly. Which is ironic, given that one common effect reported for psychedelics is ego loss. But I guess Roosh is that self centered that all he could see was himself as divine.
The idea of Roosh having an out of body experience and then becoming a fundamentalist Christian gives a new meaning to the song “Suite-Pee” by System of a Down, albeit almost the exact opposite of the original meaning.