Norwegian Men’s Rights Activist blogger Eivind Berge, known for his violent rhetoric and rape apologia, has been arrested for death threats against police.
Not too surprising, given that he once announced on his blog that “[k]illing at least one cop is on my bucket list.”
Here are some Google-translated details from a news account here:
The right-wing extremist and anti-feminist blogger Eivind Berge has been arrested for having encouraged and glorified the killing of policemen. The police have found both ammunition and textbooks in use of explosives at Berge.
The police regard the threats as an invitation to others to kill police officers, but also feared that he would commit the acts themselves shortly.
He was evidently arrested on Wednesday. According to this story — at least as far as I can tell from the obviously crude Google translation — he made a specific threat to kill a police officer this Saturday:
Berge also writes about how he was planning to attack a policeman with a knife on a Saturday evening:
“Then I used the trial to come forward as a good example for men, and I considered it to be worth 21 years in prison for premeditated murder.”
According to this account, Berge is being held for two weeks. He claims innocence.
Berge, as readers of this blog may well already know, is a fan of right-wing terrorist and mass murderer Anders Brevik. On his blog, he’s also argued (among other things) that “Rape is Equality.”
He’s glorified the murder of police on his blog numerous times.
Some examples, taken from the second news account:
“… attack on the police is something 100% in harmony with everything I stand for.”
“I maintain that police murder is both ethically and tactically correct.”
Some other examples, direct from his blog (each paragraph is from a separate post; click on the quote for the source):
I viscerally despise cops and wish them the worst. Killing at least one cop is on my bucket list.
If ever a victim of psychiatry, here is what I would do. I would first attempt to kill the cops or whoever tried to apprehend me. Failing that, I would feign docility in order to get out as soon as possible and then kill a representative of the industry as revenge. … killing cops is also very much a men’s issue. Every pig killed is also a blow against feminism, so men should be doubly elated whenever an officer goes down in the line of encroaching on our cognitive liberty.
This was his reaction to a news story about a police officer being killed:
Good news for men is rare in this hateful feminist utopia that is Norway, but today is a joyous day! Today I feel schadenfreude in my heart along with all the hate that feminism and resultant mate deprivation have instilled in me. One blue thug less on the streets.
From another post on the same subject:
The swine Olav Kildal died while trying to enforce our lack of cognitive liberty. This was a defensive, much deserved killing that cheered me up.
Here he threatens a female prosecutor:
To feminist prosecutor Anne Cathrine Aga I have the following message: The Men’s Movement is watching you, bitch, and we are seething with hatred against you personally and the police state you represent. Actions have consequences. Trials are still (mostly) public and they sink into our collective minds, where they form the basis of future activism. Hate breeds hate — that is a fact of life too smugly ignored by feminists. …
2011 is the year Norwegian men as a group emerged out of the blogosphere and into the battlefield. This in turn has led to a breakthrough for MRAs such as my good self in the public discourse, probably for the simple reason that the powers that be now realize ignoring us has deadly consequences. Men are angry now, and we have proven that we are deathly serious about resisting feminism. So the feminist prosecutors referred to above ought to wipe that smug look off their faces before it is too late. Clearly seventy-seven body bags wasn’t enough, but I am fairly confident that you will be sorry one day.
Aside from the explicit threats of violence, the violent and threatening rhetoric here is not unlike much of the rhetoric we see regularly on A Voice for Men and other MRA sites. AVFM founder Paul Elam, for example, told one feminist that:
I find you so pernicious and repugnant that the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection. … We are coming for you.
The blogger Emma the Emo, Berge’s girlfriend, has posted comments here in the past defending him. The news account quotes someone identified as Nataliya Kochergova, described as his girlfriend; I assume this is “Emma,” because what she told the media is similar to what she posted here. She of course denies that he planned any real violence. According to the article, she said:
There are not really threats. He has never had plans to kill someone, he has said several times in his blog. When for example, he says that “the police killings are an effective way to prevent stupid laws,” it’s a factual description and not a threat. Even those who love the police agree with it.
Berge, for his part, has stated publicly that if he had not met Emma, he probably would have killed by now:
At the time I wrote my last blog post, I believed I would probably become Norway’s first modern violent activist in peacetime. Celibacy enforced by a feminist regime had driven me to the point where I saw no other option. I would target the pigs who enforce feminist law, knowing I could realistically at least kill one of them before I would be captured or killed myself. Thus revenge would be assured and if I lived, my reputation as a violent criminal would make me attractive to some women. But then in the nick of time this blog attracted a lovely girl commenting as “Emma.”
This is why I take violent rhetoric from MRAs very seriously.
Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, MRAs glorify MRA “martyr” Thomas Ball, who killed himself on the steps of a New Hampshire courthouse last year in hopes that his death would inspire MRAs to literally burn down courthouses and police stations.
Ball’s manifesto is still up on A Voice for Men in its “activism” section, including these passages:
So boys, we need to start burning down police stations and courthouses. … This is too important to be using that touchy- feeling coaching that is so popular with business these days. You need to flatten them, like Wile E. Coyote. They need to be taught never to replace the rule of law. BURN-THEM-OUT!
Most of the police stations built in New England over the last 20 years are stone or brick. Fortunately, the roofs are still wood. The advantage of fire on the roof is that it is above the sprinklers
AVFM tastefully omitted Ball’s specific instructions on how to make Molotov cocktails, but left this in:
There will be some casualties in this war. Some killed, some wounded, some captured. Some of them will be theirs. Some of the casualties will be ours.
For many more examples of violent threatening rhetoric from MRAs, I urge you to go through some of my posts here and here.
“The Health and Safety Executive used to (possibly still do) have a section on their website devoted to debunking tabloid rag stories about ‘Elf ‘n Safety gawn maaad’.”
This came up previously, and they still do. I’m particularly amused by “Myth: New regulations would require trapeze artists to wear hard hats”
Eivind isn’t skinhead enough to attack a black cop for the hell of it, but he’s risking strange bedfellows and compromising his legal activism. As a Zionist, I am automatically a racist in the eyes of the Left anyway, and we can talk about how far religious identity aligns with racial categories in Israel and some fascinating test cases at margins. It’s more distance from a normative Jewish identity rather than Arab- or Muslim-ness as such, it’s just that the Othering goes into the realm of state-backed coercion really quickly and harshly for Palestinians.
…was I asked for your views on Israel? I would’ve sworn I was asking why you made particular reference to the cop on the left not having “the right to hold a Norwegian patriot in custody”.
Maybe I simply wasn’t clear enough last time? The question is as above, and my second question is — how is he “risking strange bedfellows and compromising his legal activism” by not attacking one of the cops based solely on the cop’s skin color?
As I asked previously, how do you, or he, have any idea whether either cop is Swedish born, for all you know the cop with his back to the camera was born in Italy or something, and the cop on the left born a town over from Berge — I can pull assumptions out of thin air too you know (unlike you, I make it clear when I’m doing that).
*…was I asking
I cannot fucking type today apparently.
The point is, he is not a racist, but the cop-baiting risks associating him with those who are, and those who tie in to a far darker past.
I can’t type today either.
I am the only one here deeply disturbed that Eurosabra’s concern about this is not “He made death threats.”, but rather “His death threats might make him look racist.”?
Priorities, dude.
This is odd, I got an email with a comment in that has now disappeared.
Anyway, I spent a bit of time writing it so I’ll post it anyway. The comment I saw was trying to back up Tom Martin’s “no fathers ever get to see their children whine whine whine” with a link to a notoriously right-wing UK newspaper, the Telegraph, so I looked up some real statistics:
Why are you linking to the Telegraph when you could link to MOJ statistics?[PDF]
See p.4-5: “Existing research indicated that applicants have about a 50:50 chance of getting the order they wanted (Bailey-Harris et al, 1998; Buchanan et al, 2001; Smart et al,
2003). However this data appeared to relate only to the broad type of contact
wanted (i.e. staying rather than visiting, unsupervised rather than supervised) rather
than either the frequency or duration of contact. There was no data on how the
quantum of contact ordered or agreed related to what the applicants had originally
sought.
Then p.249: “In total, there were only 35 cases in which there was evidence that applicants who sought and obtained staying contact did not achieve everything they had originally asked for in term of frequency, quantum or additional visiting. It should be pointed out, however, that they may not necessarily have been disappointed with the outcome. Twenty-seven of the 35 succeeded in at least one respect (ie either in terms of frequency, length of stay, number of overnights, additional staying contact or overall hours). Indeed in 15 our judgement was that the total package probably represented a positive outcome in terms of the actual amount of staying contact enjoyed, with only 20 being clearly disadvantageous.”
How about this report, which on p. 8 says “The proportion of cases in which contact orders are refused, for any reason, is
minute and declining (0.8% in 2002)” (citation for that is LCD (2002b): A summary report on findings from the Lord Chancellor’s Department’s survey to monitor awareness of the Guidelines. London: LCD.
The figures for 2010 are that of 95,000 family court applications, only 300 resulted in one parent not being granted contact.
So no, 2% of fathers in the UK (or whatever Martin pulled out of his tiny bony backside) are not banned from seeing their children.
Sorry, link for 300/95000 stat is here[another PDF].
Sorry for derailing again.
So saying how and when you plan to kill cops is cop-baiting? Those are some interesting definitions you’ve got there…
And then your entire point was basically “some people are racist”? Well no shit?
Well, are we worried in order to prevent harm to the police, to Eivind, to society, to Emma, to all of these? In my experience, no one cared until Breivik, when it seemed that Eivind might hurt himself no one cared, since then UiB tried and Norway has subjected him to prior restraint.
Dracula — no, it isn’t just you.
TheNatFantastic — He said “Right now, 7 or 8% of divorced fathers end up living with their kids in the UK, and a lot of manboobzers seem dead against the principle of shared custody after divorce.” — he’s off by about a factor of 10.
How’s “all of the above, and oh yeah, threats to self with method and timing will get you a psych ward visit” sound?
Seeing how I hadn’t heard of him before, I can’t really comment on “when it seemed that Eivind might hurt himself no one cared” — but in the US vague “it might be a good idea” type threats aren’t enough to take away one’s freedom with an involuntary commitment. (Have I been mixed up Norway and Sweden again?! Sorry, my brain seems to seriously want them to be the same thing >.<)
Also notice that the worry is that it might make him look racist. If he actually is racist that is apparently not a problem. Also, society should have been more worried about Berge hurting himself than about the possibility that he might commit murder.
(That was a response to Dracula upthread.)
Eurosabra:
Actually, your politics are one of the least objectionable things about you. And I couldn’t be less of a right-wing Zionist if I tried.
Actually, as you know perfectly well (because you were commenting on Berge’s blog at the time), lots of people cared. His most notorious pro-rape post got a massive amount of feedback, both on his blog and elsewhere – unsurprisingly, it was overwhelmingly negative. There was a petition seeking to have Berge thrown off his course because of his pro-rape views, which I believe was circulating a full year before Breivik’s rampage. And when I first heard about Breivik’s crimes before he was identified, my immediate thought was that it might be Berge – and I wasn’t the only one.
Dracula:
There’s a moral blindness about these people which is quite chilling. Emma’s defence of Berge doesn’t mention his threats to murder people (you know, the thing he’s been arrested over) even in passing. Meanwhile, Eurosabra’s response to Berge’s pro-rape rhetoric was not to recoil in horror (as most people were doing) but to offer him PUA tips! You know, that charming activity that involves lying to and mistreating women in order to get into their pants. That thing that rapists are wont to do, in fact.
Creepy? These people literally make my skin crawl.
Eurosabra is actually even creepier than NWO. It’s the calmness with which he proposes and supports appalling things that does it. It’s like looking into the eyes of a shark.
This must be a freak happening then:
http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/2012/07/05/indiana-dad-sentenced-to-five-years-for-criticizing-judge-custody-evaluator/
Here’s where I got the original 7% stat:
@Tom
“That’s because this judge wasn’t concerned about their welfare; he was concerned about showing Brewington, and all others who may be similarly inclined, just what kind of power family courts have.”
Sounds like this is more of a case of a corrupt judge rather than a widespread misandrist conspiracy to take children away from their fathers. Also, the article says he FACES five years, not that he was actually sentenced to five years.
The problem with MRAs is that you blame everything on feminism. Men being victimized? Men not able to find work? African American men facing racism? Chairs being too hard for men’s asses? It’s all the fault of some “feminist conspiracy.” It just makes you look paranoid, and prevents you from finding real solutions to the problems men face.
@Tom Martin
“”There was nothing on the blog which constituted political discourse. That blog contained the rantings of a man who will not take ‘no’ for an answer,” Dearborn County Prosecutor Aaron Negangard said in closing arguments before a jury of five women and one man convicted Brewington, 37, on five of the six counts he faced.
The closing arguments ended at about 12:15. The jury returned with the verdicts after about two-and-a-half hours. They decided Brewington was guilty of Intimidation of a Judge, two counts of Intimidation, Attempt to Commit Obstruction of Justice, and Perjury. He was acquitted of Unlawful Disclosure of Grand Jury Proceedings.”
link
Or…http://www.eaglecountryonline.com/news.php?nID=2479
For those who think that a site called fathersandfamilies.org is unlikely to post an entirely unbiased account of this case, here’s an alternative take.
And even a very quick skim reveals that the most serious charge over which Dan Brewington was convicted – publishing the home address of the judge in a clearly threatening context – wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the link that Tom provided, even in passing. From that version, you only get the impression that he used mildly intemperate language.
Now do we believe that an omission that big and that serious (because it clearly affects a reasonable person’s understanding of how this case played out) was an accident?
Of course Tom’s source leaves out the most important parts of the case. Shame on you, Tom.
It is stupid for a democratic citizen to make terroristic threats. It is equally stupid for a depressive to make himself seem dangerous.
The pro-rape discourse seemed so abstract as to be a thought experiment, one that no real rapist would launch, for obvious reasons. So,
given Breivik, I don’t think Eivind is a threat, and now he’s neutralized.
Which of course makes it just fine and dandy.
Creep.