It’s not going to work this time, fellas.
The good folks at A Voice for Men, the most influential Men’s Rights site out there, like to talk a lot about how much they hate hatred. Specifically, the alleged hatred allegedly promoted by feminists. Here’s Dean Esmay, the site’s Managing Editor and Chief Operations Officer, offering some typically nuanced thoughts on the subject earlier today on Twitter.
#Feminism is a multibllion$$ Hate Movement. It's time people stop being cowards and start saying it without apology. #FeminismIsHate
— Dean Esmay (@deanesmay) May 9, 2015
So how have the powers that be at AVFM responded to the revelation that one of their contributors, Indian MRA Amartya Talukdar, is a Holocaust denier and Hitler fan who thinks Hillary Clinton is a “Jewess?” Did they denounce Talukdar for his embrace of perhaps the most hateful hater in history, and take down his posts on their site? Not so much.
I sent a few Tweets to AVFM head man Paul Elam cataloguing some of Talukdar’s more colorful statements on Twitter; Elam responded by blocking me.
So I sent an email to Esmay.
Dean —
It seems a bit odd for someone who goes on about the alleged “hatred” allegedly promoted by feminists and the SPLC to remain silent about the fact that AVFM just published a post written by a Holocaust denier and Hitler fan,
And, no, that’s not hyperbole. Here’s the proof — these are all archived tweets of his.
Here are the Tweets I linked to. (Click on the images to see the archived versions.)
(In case you’re wondering about the abrupt ending there, Talukdar was trying to write “hail [sic] Hitler” and ran out of characters. He finished up in a followup Tweet.)
I then linked Esmay to my post on the subject, telling him he could find more examples there.
I continued:
Maybe you didn’t know. But you know now — and so does Paul; I contacted him about it on Twitter, and he responded by blocking me, so it’s clear he saw my Tweets. …
So will you or Paul be doing anything about this?
A fairly simple question, no?
Here was Esmay’s thoughtful response:
So I’m going to take that as a “no, AVFM will not be doing anything about the fact that they have published the writings of a Holocaust denier and Hitler fan who thinks Hillary Clinton is a ‘Jewess.'”
When I first wrote about Talukdar’s, er, interesting beliefs, I said I thought AVFM would respond to the news by deflecting and denying the truth. I didn’t expect Elam would also block me on Twitter for asking, or that Esmay would declare me a “stalker madman” after dismissing direct evidence of Talukdar’s beliefs as somehow being “lies” on my part.
The AVFMers aren’t the only ones trying to employ evasive maneuvers. Talukdar has deleted his original Holocaust-denying, Hitler-praising Tweets. And when I sent him Tweets asking him about his beliefs he first responded by
- listing a number of famous anti-Semites (including Henry Ford and Richard Wagner and George Washington, who actually wasn’t an anti-Semite) and asking if I expected him to hate them too
- asking me “why is there rampant divorce illegitimacy and teenage pregnancy in USA”
- telling me that “you are a fundamentalist who uses terror to scuttle people’s voice”
- telling me that “you are a hate monger who doesn’t believe in freedom of speech.”
Several hours later, after I wrote to Esmay, Talukdar tried a new tack, admitting that Hitler was indeed a “devil” and a “hate monger”and promising that he would stop denying the Holocaust … if I acknowledged the Bengal Famine.
Obviously, this makes no sense; his beliefs on the Holocaust should not be contingent on what some random person believes about a different historical event. I wrote back:
@a_talukdar You'll agree that there was a Holocaust … if I agree that there was a Bengal famine? That makes no sense whatsoever.
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) May 9, 2015
@a_talukdar I don't deny the Bengal famine, or Churchill's large role in it, but why would that change what you think about the Holocaust?
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) May 9, 2015
I asked him why, if he honestly believed that Hitler was a hate monger, he had Tweeted “hail [sic] Hitler” less than a week ago. He replied:
I told him that this also made no sense, and that it sounded like he was just telling me what he thought I wanted to hear. I asked him to explain why, as recently as this past week, he had declared the Holocaust a “lie” and “propaganda devoid of any facts,” and was demanding proof that Hitler’s gas chambers had even existed.
After a series of evasive non-answers Talukdar grudgingly admitted:
Shortly afterwards he took his account private. (Luckily I thought to screenshot his recent Tweets before he did this; see here. The only one missing is the one listing anti-Semites.)
These aren’t, I daresay, the actions of someone who has actually changed his mind. So you’ll have forgive me if I doubt the sincerity of his apparent, if grudging, rejection of the Holocaust denial he was so recently, and repeatedly, espousing.
@Buttercup
“Police! I’m being stalked by someone with opposing ideology who pointed out that I promoted a Holocaust denier! He’s hurting my fee-fees.”
Nazi race hatred wasn’t particularly consistent. I think the Nazis were fairly comfortable extending “Aryan status” to some tanned folk if it behooved them, such as Iranians and some Indians who indeed are Aryan under the old definition of language groups. And, of course, it did behoove them given that aggravating (legitimate) discontent against the British in India and Persia would be advantageous. At the time and pre-DNA science, people commonly associated ‘race’ with language groups. So while some Slavs, like say in Poland, may have been pretty much genetically near-as-dammit identical to many Eastern Germans, they thought of them as a completely different ‘race’ because of the language group thing (though Slavic languages are also Indo-European and thus I guess “Aryan”, too? Nazi ‘science’ didn’t always make a lot of sense.) Nazis were also happy to cosy up with Muslim semitic people who I guess must be pretty similar genetically to Levantine Jewish populations and thus somewhat similar to European Jewish populations that they tried to wipe from the Earth.
At any rate, I can see why some Indians wouldn’t necessarily feel themselves excluded from the ideology of the Nazis if they were of that bent. Some people always draw comfort from imagining themselves the superior race or gender or whatever and it makes sense that they would wish to draw together and confirm their biases in an echo chamber of hatred.
So they send you irrelevant responses to your facts regarding one of their writers. Then they block you, tell you never to contact them again and make an account private after deleting the offensive tweets. Classy.
You know, if the cops were to treat Esmay as they do a fair few women who report there would be a whole lot of nothing. I wonder if it would break his heart.
Churchill eh! So this guy wants to lump an elected prime minister into the same category as a totalitarian dictator who did away with the democratic process. Interesting, given the 1945 general election defeat of Churchill that came as enormous shock to him, was in part caused by a protest vote of the armed forces given Churchill’s mismanagement (and huge loss of life) in key campaigns (Crete,Dieppe,Singapore) and his treatment if the miners during the 1944 strike (a key factor that lead to Thatcher’s general attitude towards the miners as she saw them as betrayers if Churchill). Anyway it looks like he has a very fluid attitude to his own belief system, he’ll accept the holocaust if you accept the Bengal famine. How does that actually work?
In all fairness Dieppe was more down to Mountbatten’s over optimistic (and indeed cockerels) assessment of the chances. Of course, in a strict utilitarian sense, it was a useful lesson for D-Day.
[I got some strange looks from some army buds when I called a project ‘Operation Dieppe’ on the grounds “We know we’ll fuck this one up but it will get rid of all the mistakes before the proper one”]
Again this was more down to Percival’s (pragmatic in the circumstances) decision to surrender than Churchill’s input. Churchill knew the defence was hopeless anyway but as he put it “They [the population] will accept defeat but not abandonment”.
Er, ‘cockerels’ = ‘reckless’ [curse autocorrect]
I’VE RUN OUT OF WAYS TO EXPRESS DERISIVE, IRONIC LAUGHTER. Send help.
@banana
Seconding leaving NIN out of this, as per request of my lonely 14-year-old self who used them to get through some really rough spots. Plus, I still listen to some stuff. And it was my Intro to Industrial 101.
Oh, I was hoping to hear more about Mountbatten’s cockerels, and whether a carousel was involved.
They were okay with Talukdar when he was defending rape, so I’d say that ship had sailed.
I find myself surprisingly disappointed that “cockerels” isn’t some charming bit of overseas slang.
Now I’m picturing Talukdar as Franz Liebkind from The Producers.
“THAT’S BECAUSE YOU WERE TAKEN IN BY THE BBC! Filthy British lies! But did they ever say a bad word about Winston Churchill? CHURCHILL! With his cigars, and his brandy, and his ROTTEN paintings! ROTTEN! Hitler, there was a painter! He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon! Two coats!”
Hopefully this will be something we can use against them next time they say they stand for equality. Because aggressively defending a dude who apologises for rape AND is outlandishly anti-semitic is totes not misogynist, or racist.
Thinking about it, they have a pretty piss poor record if they want to prove they’re not against women…or anyone who isn’t like them.
Alan are you a fellow Canuck by chance?
I
Hi Dude
Sorry, no.
I do have quite a few Canadian friends though.
Well I did have until I was discussing your quest for a new national anthem with a friend and didn’t realise my suggestion about “need[ing] a rhyme for ‘shitty music and bears'” was somewhat more public than intended. Curse Facebook’s complicated Privacy settings!
Sorry! 🙂
In a manner of speaking…namely, by finding weaselly ways to urinate all over their own mothers while elevating the father to the Grand Panjandrum of Whatever.
As I recall, Paulie had his first “red pill” moment by kicking and screaming when his mom tried to get him to take his diarrhea meds, at 13.
Odd that even when he does acknowledge the holocaust, he downplays it by forgetting to count 5 million of the victims. Could his flexible beliefs not flex to the full extent?
I love that after all their denial of Mysogynistic Internet abuse, being asked a question is deserving of a call to police.
Lol no worries Alan.
I actually find our anthemn tedious and boring. And being a veteran in our current political climate pretty much means I’d rather not hear it. Its all hollow bullshit.
There’s no question that David has gotten under their skin and into their heads. Nothing upsets a pompous ass more than mockery, particularly when he is quoted accurately. It’s cute that the MRAs posting in the comments section of the Sharlet GQ article all seem to think I’m a David sock — they repeatedly refer to me as Manboobz. Attila Vinczer called me the “most horrible despicable evil freak of nature” he had ever dealt with, and I was very flattered until I realized he thought he was talking to David. Like there couldn’t possibly be two MRA-mocking pro-feminist men in the world, amirite?
@ Dude
Thank you for your service!
@GrumpyOldSJM
And it’s not just you, either. I’ve seen comment threads where the usual suspects from AVfM keep accusing every dissenter of being Futrelle, or at other times some other feminist who’s been pissing them off lately. In general I’ve noticed when you end up in a back and forth with MRAs, as soon as a second feminist shows up and agrees with you, they will instantly assume it’s a sock puppet. And then no matter how many dissenters show up, they will all be assumed sock puppets of one person. Denial seems to be a key ingredient in the MRA cocktail.
It’s not the first time AVFM has had an anti-Semite/ racist blogger on their site and it won’t be the last.
Dean also made a “You Jew!” comment at me in pm and then started ranting about having a Jewish friend when i called him on it. It’s one of the many things that led up to me finally blocking him.
https://thetruepooka.wordpress.com/2013/08/05/a-voice-for-bigots/
https://thetruepooka.wordpress.com/2014/08/16/totally-not-racist-i-swear11/
Oh, and David? What Dean Esmay said to you (You’re a madman stalker who is trying to stay relevant) is exactly what he said to me when I pointed out such things to him.
That seems to be his go to response on even the slightest hint of a criticism of him or AVFM. He’s got a very bad case of projection.
They really are pathetic. .
@dhag
MRA Mojito
1 shot Denial, of the delusional variety
1 shot Bitters(ness)
A handful of crushed solipsism leaves
Top it off with entitlement-ade
A generous squeeze of immaturity
Shake well, serve over icy hearts, and garnish with a fragile ego.
Be careful not to mix with logic, as the concoction could become explosive.
I wonder what a PUA cocktail would consist of.
That does sound delicious.
Mix 1 jigger entitlement with 1 jigger sociopathy. Cut a creepfruit in half and add the squeezed juice. Shake well, pour into a glass, add two tablespoons of jism. Garnish with a twist of rape.
@PoM – Don’t forget to muddle the logic thoroughly and sprinkle with acronyms.
I get the distinct feeling he hasn’t had an original thought since the mid-1990s. And that his personal growth is also arrested at “sulky teenager”.
Multibillion$$? Is that perhaps 60 Billion Double Dollars?
I’m a terrible person. My immediate reaction to “what’s in a PUA cocktail?” was ‘Roofies and GBH.’
Well guess it makes a difference to the usual excuses of Freeze Peach and satire .
@Jack
And yet you’re not entirely wrong…
RedFox beat me to it.
You know, I think that this incident has finally given me an MRA I can actually comprehend, even as I find his position detestable. It’s obvious that Talukdar has succumbed to a very specific and singular fallacy: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
He’s actually right about one thing–if it weren’t for WWII, Churchill would be up for nomination as one of history’s great monsters, and in general Euro-American society and history does as much of a whitewash on his actions as the Turkish government does on the Armenian genocide.
But from that, he’s decided that anyone who hated Churchill deserves accolades, merely for that fact. And of course, Churchill’s greatest foe was Hitler, so Talukdar, so filled with anger at the man he holds responsible for atrocities against his own countrymen, embraces a mass-murderer.
And of course, once he does so, he then has arrayed himself against everyone who finds Holocaust deniers to be utterly despicable (because they are), and then assumes that they are his enemy, too. And since that position is strongest among society’s progressives, he figures he must hate them as well–and from there, it’s just a hop, skip and jump into the waiting embrace of Paul Elam and A Voice for Men.
Even as vile as his postings are, I can at least dredge up an iota of sympathy for him–which is rare. If Roosh was in front of me and on fire, I wouldn’t so much as piss on him to put out the flames. I can at least find it in me to have hope that Talukdar might someday realize he’s embraced someone as vile as the man he despises, and see where that has led him.
I love/hate it when these types insist people mocking their direct quotes are spreading lies about them.
60 billion double dollars?
Remember, the only reason it’s called ‘The Dark Enlightenment’ is because it sounds way cooler than (Neo-)Fascism.