We Hunted The Mammoth
So there was a bit of a battle in Berkeley on Saturday between a motley crew of alt-rightists who wanted to give some speeches and a bunch of anti-fascist (antifas) who didn’t want them to.
Things got a bit, well, heated, with the alt-right anti-antifas going on a bit of a rampage.
Roosh Valizadeh — alleged pickup artist, ironic rape legalization advocate and big league Trump fan — has a request for our failed president: Protect men from naggy women, who are basically a bunch of terrorists, if you think about it.
The (alleged) pickup artist who calls himself “Heartiste” is a lot of things — a misogynist, a homophobe, a racist, a bizarrely overwrought prose stylist, to name just a few of his more charming features. But one thing I never would have pegged him for? A Harry Potter fan.
There’s a civil war brewing in the midst of the once-happy alt-right. No, I don’t mean the squabbles between those alt-rightists who’ve abandoned Trump over his Syria attack and those sticking with Daddy — that’s old news. I mean the civil war between the neo-Nazis who think the earth is a globe and those who think it’s flat.
When events in the real world challenge our preconceived beliefs, most of us experience a sense of cognitive dissonance; the intellectually honest amongst us ultimately adjust our beliefs to account for these inconvenient truths. Others respond by inventing their own realities in which these truths are deemed falsehoods.
Remember Milo Yiannopoulos, the At-Rightish Breitbart “journalist” who used to call Donald Trump “daddy?” He apparently wants the world to know that:
When Donald Trump lauched 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase last night, it took a lot of observers by surprise, none more so than the Alt-rightists and fellow travelers who’ve long made up his most fervent fan base. To say they weren’t pleased would be a gross understatement.
Men’s Rights Activists aren’t good at much, but they’re remarkably adept at one thing: blaming women for things done by men. Rape? Don’t blame the rapists, blame their allegedly abusive mothers who made them that way. Environmental catastrophe? Don’t blame the CEOs of polluting corporations or the politicians who enable them, blame women and their love of shopping.
Most of us have moved on from that whole “Mike Pence refuses to go to dinner alone with women other than his wife because he’s apparently afraid they might end up doing it on the table right there next to the Crispy Shrimp Lettuce Wraps.”
