We Hunted The Mammoth
Conservatives know that, with enough money, you can buy your way into almost any debate. Rich right-wingers have been pouring millions of dollars into think tanks for decades and propping up money-losing periodicals and websites that could never thrive (or possible even survive) on their own. And it works.
By David Futrelle
It’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference between a certain subspecies of contemporary leftist — the anti-“identity politics” types who take a naughty delight in dismissing their foes as “retarded” — and the pepe-posting assholes of the alt-right and/or the woman-hating dinguses of the Men’s Rights Movement.
By David Futrelle
Paul Elam, the founder of A Voice for Men, has responded to his site’s inclusion on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s official list of hate groups rather predictably, lashing out against the hate-tracking organization with what he thinks is righteous indignation. And then asking people to give him money.
The Summer 2017 WHTM pledge drive is on! Donate generously to enable our continuing coverage of dudes who consider themselves oppressed by women! Thanks!
By David Futrelle
UPDATE: DeVos met with MRAs Thursday; here’s what she told reporters afterwards.
The Trump administration has given a lot of fringe political weirdos a certain not-quite-legitimacy. We’ve seen “alt-lite” conspiracy slinger and bobblehead salesman Mike Cernovich given White House press credentials; meanwhile, Twitterbanned right-wing pseudo-journalist Chuck Johnson seems to have become entangled in one of the developing Trump/Russia collusion scandals, working at the behest of a longtime Republican donor (now deceased) who was apparently willing to drop big bucks to help Trump by somehow uncovering Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails.
There are two more stops on sleazeball PUA and Rape legalization advocate Roosh Valizadeh’s “World Tour,” both in Canada. He’s scheduled talks in Montreal on August 8 and Toronto on the 15th.
Some folks are trying to make sure he doesn’t enter Canada at all, setting up a petition on Change.org demanding that the Canadian government “DENY ‘Roosh V’ Entry to Canada for the purposes of disseminating hate.”
Here’s their basic case:
A writer from Roosh Valizadeh’s terrible Return of Kings site recently got himself into a bit of trouble at a white power convention in Tennessee.
The problem wasn’t that the writer, one Blair Naso, didn’t fit in with the motley assortment of Hitler-lovers and former National Review writers who attended the 2015 American Renaissance conference, put on by an organization that actually has won itself an official “hate group” designation from the Southern Poverty Law Center for its virulent racism and its obsessive advocacy for a white “homeland.”
No, he fit in fine, ideologically speaking. In a post for Return of Kings, Naso praised the AmRen crowd for “doing a wonderful work,” and “saying the things that others are terrified to say.”
The problem? Well, Mr. Naso got a wee bit drunk and started harassing women at a local bar. As Naso sheepishly admits in his ROK post,
I was a little saddened to read recently that A Voice for Men — the self-proclaimed “Men’s Human Rights” site that has posted an open call to firebomb government buildings in its “activism” section — will no longer be writing about little old me.
What a year!
The Men’s Rights movement, the most important human rights movement of the 21st century, got 2012 off to a flying start in February with an event in Bozeman, Montana that was quite literally attended by no one. After that, the year was a whirlwind of activity. Let’s go to the timeline:
If you stuff a bunch of angry, narcissistic, egotistical twits into a “movement” the size of a teapot, it is perhaps inevitable that there will be drama. So I’m pleased to report on a dramatic BREAKING STORY in the Men’s Rights “movement” – a split between A Voice for Men and the bald, blabby, bigoted far-right videoblogger Bernard Chapin.
Well, I’m not sure how much of a BREAKING STORY it is. It happened about three weeks ago, but I only just noticed it yesterday.
NOTE: Man Boobz Pledge Week Continues! Big thanks to everyone who has donated!
If you haven’t yet, and want to, here’s the button you’re looking for:
UPDATE: AVFM has taken the post down.
Men’s Rights Activists have had a serious hate-on for the Southern Poverty Law Center ever since the hate-group-monitoring watchdog wrote about the misogyny in the Men’s Rights movement last spring.
Since the SPLC devotes its time to ferreting out bigots and exposing them to the world, this has put SPLC-hating MRAs in some interesting company. While not everyone who’s criticized the SPLC is a bigot – both Harper’s magazine and the Nation have been critical of the group and its fundraising methods – many of the most virulent critics of the SPLC are far-right racists. On Reddit, for example, the anti-SPLC subreddit, called simply SPLC, is dominated by white nationalists; indeed, at the moment, one of the top links on its front page is titled “Interest for White Student Union grows.”
