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.
Wow, I just saw this, but you’re wrong, Murphy. Boazizi comitted suicide because the police had confiscated his scales – of which he could not afford another pair, nor bribe his way out – without the scales he couldn’t keep working and support his family, he probably never had enough money to last more than a few days at a time. Last words; “How do you expect me to make a living?”. He most probably would’ve done the same regardless of the gender of the police officer that put him in this situation.
And how you think him an inspiration for thugs attacking the reporter in Egypt is beyond me, rapists don’t need anyone to inspire them.
“pregnancy childbirth”
Pregnancy childbirth – the condition in which you give birth and yet you are still pregnant? A way to distinguish childbirth that occurs in people who had been pregnant from the other kind where a stork delivers the baby?
PS – Whores, very fat whores.
“Pregnancy childbirth – the condition in which you give birth and yet you are still pregnant?”
That isn’t impossible, but I somehow doubt he was referring to the rare cases where one twin/multiple is premature and labor is then successfully halted. (I am a wealth of useless facts)
Way back when, Tom told us about his first date banter. It consisted of him lecturing his date about why he wasn’t going to pay for drinks.
And then there’s B*n’s first date banter, which consists of cleverly deducing whether a woman is a feminist by asking “So, are you a feminist?”
Aw, man, my wonky sleep schedule mademe miss all the Tom Martin-y trolling goodness!
Tom! Hey, Tom! Tell me about Penguins again, Tom. You used to love the Penguins, Tom. Won’t you tell us about them again?
If anyone’s interested, Tom’s been posting all throughout the night GMT. ‘Eating disorders and sex trafficking don’t exist’ was at 03.13, ‘you’re all fat fatty fat fats’ was at 05.15.
I’m just going to go right ahead and call it – dude is drunk as.
Really Tom, you should be saving that money to go towards the £37,000 vanity/idiot tax you have to pay.
Whore?
(It’s possible that only Ami will get this.)
You can’t blame him for drinking when all the chairs in the world are so hard.
Life’s tough for a menz with all these whores* around and no sex to be found.
*a word which Martin analogized to the N word and which he believes most women are. Nope, no misogyny here; why do you ask?
You’re right Tulgey, in a world where he can’t even enjoy penguins, what hope is there for Tom?
For those of us who can still enjoy penguins, here’s a ticklish baby one to take your mind off the troll:
MEGA D’AWWWW
Cookie is excellent brain bleach.
“…you’re wrong … Boazizi … would’ve done the same [committed suicide by self-immolation] regardless of the gender of the police officer that put him in this situation … And how you think him an inspiration for thugs attacking the reporter in Egypt is beyond me, rapists don’t need anyone to inspire them.”
Well, clearly we don’t know the answer to ‘what if’ questions, so we’ll never know for sure whether he would or wouldn’t have done the same thing if the official had been a man, however his own sister says that the female gender of his alleged attacker was critical: “Leila, 24, one of Mohamed’s six siblings, acknowledged that the blow from an official, especially a woman, had undoubtedly shamed her brother,” (The Independent, ‘I have lost my son but I am proud of what he did,” 21Jan 2011). I should stress though, that the officer concerned, and her colleagues, all deny she struck Boazizi.
Indeed, what actually happened was that Boazizi groped and grabbed the breasts of a low-ranking female official, Faida Hamdi, who was simply doing her job and who wasn’t a police officer anyway (1). Afterwards she was imprisoned and possibly tortured, and her role as the true ‘spark’ that inspired the Arab Spring has been completely overlooked. This is typical of the way women’s contribution is ignored and minimised while the violence of men is glorified.
It cannot be said often enough that suicide is an act of violence, commonly purportrated by abusers in an attempt to control.
As for Boazizi being an ‘inspiration’, well, he is credited with having inspired anti-government violence across the Arab world (2). What’s more, after targetting their leaders and overthrowing governments across the Middle East, these rebels – all men btw – proceeded to turn their attention to the targets they wanted all along – women (3). The real focus of all the violence we’ve seen across the Middle East in the past year (the so-called ‘Arab Spring’) is certainly not freedom or ‘democracy’, it is the desire to abuse, assault and control women.
Make no mistake, the MRAs, misogynists and vicious, violent hate-mongers like Boazizi and Thomas Ball, are highly influential and, as David says, very dangerous.
1. http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/woman-who-blew-arab-world
2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/20/tunisian-fruit-seller-mohammed-bouazizi
3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/09/egyptian-women-protesters-sexually-assaulted
@ Murphy
Not sure you’ll see this as your response was a few pages back.
You made a wee bit of a mistake though, dear: that wasn’t a peer reviewed study, it was an article in a F4J supporting, right-wing newspaper.
It does, however, demonstrate that it is indeed a myth that fathers automatically lose contact with their children when a mother says so.
Tommy: But anyway, this should be great news for manboobzers. It means it’ll be safer than you think to lose that extra 15 pounds. Don’t worry, you won’t die – and you will become a little more popular with men too, because in case you didn’t know, we like you a bit slimmer than you like you.
Speak for yourself. I don’t think my losing 15 lbs would be either healthy, or likely to make you like me any more.
I have hard chairs in my house (the five around the dining room table are all bare wood).
Thus combining DV homicides and suicides of DV victims, it means more men are killed in domestic violence than women.
Wow… you just said the abuser is the victim.
You are amazing. Someone who kills themself, because of a disease is different from someone who kills himself because he’s angry at his partner. He’s not a victim. If someone shoots up a bank, and and then shoots himself, he’s not counted among the victims.
No more for an abuser.
I wish I thought I’d seen the depths to which an abuse apologist will sink. I’m afraid I haven’t. But you are in the running for most pathetic excuse for a decent human being I’ve ever seen.
Good luck paying that judgement. Please, pretty please, appeal.
@Murphy, Faida may not have been a police officer, but the police still confiscated Bouazizi’s stuff, she admits as much. The value of multiple witnesses is questionable when they’re all on the same side (the authorities).
Now, there are conflicitng reports as to what actually happened between Faida and Bouazizi; you say he groped her, his family claim he was beaten by the police she called – you seem to automaticaly believe the former, but this is all irrelevant to the fact that he didn’t commit suicide because he had been slapped by a woman. He was desparate due to poverty and the unfair treatment he’d received from the state.
You’re contradicting yourself when you say Faida didn’t slap him and that it was important she was a woman, why would that be important to him if he wasn’t insulted by her?
Again, you’re contradiciting yourself, either Faida acted in some way to drive Bouazizi to suicide and trigger this chain of events, and hence is not entirely innocent as you claim she is or she was attacked by Bouazizi, you can’t have it both ways.
I won’t get into a sidetrack on whether suicide is usually an act intended to punish others (I don’t believe so, just for the record), but Bouazizi’s suicide, outside the governer’s office, was clearly – by it’s location – intended as a protest against corrupt and unfair authorities.
Also, did you even read your own links? The guardian article on Bouazizi doesn’t present him as a bitter, hateful misogynist:
Now, you talk about the Arab Spring:
The situation in Egypt is totally different to that of Tunisia. Obviously, Islamists in Egypt gaining power is a bad thing for the rights of women (and Copts btw.), but such an unfortunate consequence does not mean that the original goals of the revolution were misogynistic. Women also wanted to see Mubarak gone, participated in the protests, and were attacked and maltreated by his thugs, again I don’t think you read the article you linked to:
As for the sexual assaults of women in Tahrir, that’s not a special consequence of the Arab Spring. Whenever there are disasters, riots or a state of unrest which ties up emergency services, there will be predators who’ll take advantage of the chaos to loot, rape etc.
…you’re the only person I’ve heard talking like this, shifting the blame on this poor soul. I really don’t understand it, and you’ve given no real evidence to support it.
Thanks for going through that McDuff, I haven’t had the time. What I don’t understand is why Murphy is bringing this up – he’s the only person to have mentioned it in the thread. IFAIK he’s commented on this thread three times: firstly to link to the Telegraph in order to (falsely) accuse mothers of excluding fathers from their childrens’ lives, secondly to say the Arab Spring was sparked because a man was assaulted by a woman, then finally to say that Boazizi and every other participant in the Arab Spring was a violent misogynist.
It really doesn’t make sense – and is anyone else getting a hint of racism in the way Murphy conflates and dismisses all the revolutions as the work of thuggish woman-haters?
(Also, McDuff, are you the McDuff I know on Twitter? If so, hi.)
Eurosabra: “The pro-rape discourse seemed so abstract as to be a thought experiment, one that no real rapist would launch, for obvious reasons.”
Abstract, you think this is abstract:
Monday, June 08, 2009 8:25:00 PM
Make no mistake about it, female economic freedom and male sexual opportunity are directly contravening forces. If we are going to have the former — and we are — then men who are not getting any pussy and understand what is going on are going to stop thinking of rape as wrong. We also have nothing to lose because we have nothing invested in society (no children) and an involuntarily celibate man already has zero quality of life, so prison is no deterrent.
How about this…
Friday, August 07, 2009 12:51:00 AM
You don’t get it. I am the male response to feminism. I would never have believed rape is morally legitimate without feminism.
Here’s some more:
Friday, August 07, 2009 1:40:00 AM
No, I am dead serious. Whether people find it offensive is irrelevant to me.
Pretty abstract…”I am dead serious,” about the stuff above that quotation (and more besides).
Thursday, August 20, 2009 2:37:00 PM
I am not attracted to prepubescent girls and neither do I derive sexual pleasure from killing. You have me confused with sadistic pedophiles. Read for comprehension, idiot.
No one in the MRA movement would do anything but condemn your hypothetical example. We are talking about raping women here (reproductive age, mostly, because they are most attractive, though older feminists deserve it too), and not as a basic male right, but on the basis of enforced equality between the sexes, which is an idea the feminists came up with.
And we can close with:
Tuesday, August 25, 2009 12:10:00 AM
Men paying for it in one way or another is indeed the natural order of the word, and I have been with sex workers many times. However, on January 1st, 2009, the feminists finally managed to criminalize buying sex for all Norwegian men (while women are still free to sell it, just like in Sweden, but unlike all other countries I am aware of, who at least pretend it is about morality rather than blatant oppression of men and so criminalize the whore as much as the john). This law applies to all Norwegians anywhere we go in the world, even where prostitution is legal. At the moment it is literally impossible for me to have sex without being a criminal. Rape or prostitute, either way I am going to jail if caught. This was the last straw that made me really, really not care if I rape a woman or not…. No, that is incomparable to what I am doing. I am not aimlessly promoting chaos, but advocating a very purposeful course of action justified as retribution for and activism against direct oppression of men.
Yeah, so fucking abstract.
Then again, we know you think, “mild gaslighting” is ok. So why should we believe anything you say about things which make you, and your movement look less than stellar?
Eurosabra: You can read body language well enough to avoid intrusive touch while still talking.
You do it so well you got a minder in college. You do it so well you have to gaslight (mildly). You do it so well you admit to using manipulation to get laid.
Maybe you don’t do it so well.
Yeah, I’m a lot more sensible in person and no one in meatspace has ever really noticed or cared.
More gaslighting… you may think the minder wasn’t warranted, and perhaps it wasn’t, but someone noticed, someone cared.
McDuff, thenatfantastic,
I’m afraid I’m in the middle of something, so can’t respond to all your points re: Bouazizi, though I will do. For now, let me just address the point about fathers not seeing their children.
It’s basically perverse and disingenous to deny that many fathers lose contact with their children after a relationship ends. The figures across the developed world range from 30% to 40% of children losing contact with their fathers in the five years after a separation. That really isn’t in question, it’s certainly not a myth. It’s just silly to get into an argument about it.
The actual question is; does it matter? There is research which shows that the most important contribution a father makes to his children is financial (1) this is why the loss of a wealthy father is so much more significant than the loss of a poor one. Other than that, the most important determinant in the life outcomes of a child are all maternal.
So, to be clear, what is a myth is the idea that fathers, or indeed men in general, make a meaningful non-financial contribution to children’s life outcomes. This is why the move towards ‘shared parenting’ is so damaging, as we’ve seen in Australia. If fathers really cared about their children, they would focus on providing for them, and their mothers, financially, and stop agitating for custody, access etc. which has been shown to be irrelevant to how well the child turns out.
1.http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/walker/current_research/youth6.pdf
What the hell? Murphy, you can’t be serious.
Murphy – what the ever-living fuck are you talking about? No. No. Fuck that idea right the fuck off.
What matters for children is that whoever looks after them cares about them, and that they’re not looked after by people who don’t. It doesn’t matter what gender or relative that person is. Money is important to ensure that the child has their needs met, but again – how the fuck is that gendered? Fuck you.
I’m calling troll on this one. Too many appeals to ‘man-hating-straw-feminism’. This is the fourth one.
Murphy: I’d try to reply in detail, but you are incoherent. Up is down, and sideways is straight ahead.
There is no point, because nothing you’ve said connects to anything else you’ve said; other than you think women are being mean to men about custody somehow.
No support for it, but you know it’s true.
“So, to be clear, what is a myth is the idea that fathers, or indeed men in general, make a meaningful non-financial contribution to children’s life outcomes.”
Cause it’s not like kids can learn anything from someone if they have a penis… On behalf of my own children and their father kindly fuck off with your vile nonsense you trolling arsehat (and if you *aren’t* trolling for the love of all that is holy, please don’t reproduce. Thanks)!
@Murphy
Or we could, you know, make it so that parents can share in both raising the children and providing for them so that women can have successful careers and men can have proper relationships with their children. And even if there is a stay-at-home parent/working outside the house parent dynamic, it doesn’t have to be gendered.
What you want is simply to maintain the status quo, and that really doesn’t help.
It’s more.like the powers that be were gay women, and there were objections to my approaching women anytime, anywhere, no matter how politely.
For the rest, I’m.anonymous, free, and unhindered. Eivind can be a train wreck in public if he likes. You cannot get more harmless than me without disappearing. No one has ever complaines or had me barred
Well, I’m sorry to have kicked things off there, but I’m afraid mine is a pretty mainstream view.
“How can a dad – unemployed or working outside the home – be a good father? Not by fighting for custody or demanding “shared parenting” after divorce or breakup. The best way a dad can be a good father is by providing support to the mother of his children” (1)
I appreciate that this may be difficult for some people to accept, but it’s far more important that we are clear about what’s best for the only ones who matter in this – the children themselves.
1. http://www.nomas.org/node/244 “Want To Be A Good Dad? Support Mom And Avoid Father’s Rights Groups”