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.
Steele: Tom Martin is in no way the face of the MRM. He has made a name for himself, but it is for himself. He is no more MRA than Barack Hussein Obama is.
So, when they appointed you to a Bishoprick in the MRM, did they give you a nicely tooled crosier and an elaborate mitre?
Because you’d need something like that to use the ol’ bell, book, and candle, to cast Tommy “Penguins are Whores” Martin out.
As shown, he’s got lots of people who think he is an MRA. Before you can convince us, you need to convince them. Then they need to repudiate him.
Good luck with that. I’ll bet you convince us of how costly Vietnam was, and how systemic “misandry” is before that happens.
Okay, you’ve outlined your premise. Now show us a single shred of evidence that any of it’s true.
you are literally the only mra who has ever said these things, so why do you think you can claim these are ‘fundamental principles.’ we’ve been over this dude: wanting things to be true and endlessly huffin’n’puffin’ about them does not make them true
So the MRAs who publish and advocate Ball’s call for violent revolution are not MRAs?
The MRAs who advocate for lowering the age of consent are not MRAs?
The MRAs who advocate the repeal of the vote for women are not MRAs?
The MRA’s who devalue the lives of women and girls on a regular basis are not MRAs?
@Steele:
“1. The MRM is non-violent. Any violent rhetoric is not part of the Movement.
2. The MRM repudiates abject moral repugnance. Martin’s views on child prostitution cross this line.
3. The MRM is for equality between the sexes.
4. The MRM believes in the fundamental value of human life.”
I am quite curious to know where you learned these basic tenets as I honestly haven’t seen them floating around anywhere.
@bostonian
and they’re not scotsman, either!
I mean, there’s plenty of proof on this very blog that not one item on your list is a factual statement. Ball’s in your court, Steele.
And yet Ferdinand “Spanking/Abuse is A-OK” Bardamu is an MRA. (I can’t remember the title of that post, does anyone remember?)
And yet every major MRM website allows men to lament the misandry of age of consent
Yet most MRAs believe that the sexes are inherently unequal in talents, skills, logic etc
First, can you show us where the MRM has signed onto these values?
So, what are your feelings about the “deepness” of Paul Elam and the AVfM crew?
Please define “abject moral repugnance.” How exactly do Martin’s views cross that line?
I would love to hear you define what that means.
And that too.
Really, your entire list raises more questions than it answers…
Ninjad by, like, everyone. It takes me so long to do the blockquotes.
Steele: Not true, there are individuals I dislike who I would consider MRAs because they do not violate the fundamental principles of the Movement. Ferdinand Bardamu immediately springs to mind.
Where are these principles? Is there a sacred oath one swears before signing them? What are the protocols for censuring minor breaches of them?
So, do you repudiate the feminists who have denied Sarah Palin the label? Do you consider Sarah Palin a feminist?
Repudiate? No. Dispute? Depends. If they can show a good reason for saying they don’t think she’s a feminist, no.
If they say she had to be called a “non-feminist” because she embarrasses them, I’ll say they are full of it.
Because feminism (like the MRM) doesn’t have a membership committee. It sucks for you that Tom “hard chairs are misandry” Martin makes you look bad. But that’s not my problem. It not my problem that Eivind Berge makes you look bad. Nor that Sodini and Brievik and Lépine make you look bad.
They make you look bad because they (and Tom Ball and Peter Nolan© the dude who made the anti-sarkeesian game and all the rest of the violent dickwads) are fellow travellers who flocked to your banner because it’s their cause too.
You aren’t the Pope of the MRM, you want them cast out, you need to get the Movement to anathemise them. Not Paul Elam’s slavering winks and nods, but real repudiation.
Good luck with that.
And I am just making a point, where others have made the specific critiques.
I see why his teacher tried to steer him away from writing.
You know, I never understood those guys who called women as a class whores.
I just don’t get it.
If a guy is in a committed relationship, and religious, I could see how he might not like promiscuity on a social level. Sorta. It doesn’t affect him tho.
Then there is the average guy. He benefits from female promiscuity. Compared to earlier times, the bar is set so much lower for sex, so I can’t see this guy complaining about it. There is no way in which this guy loses.
So, it comes down to the guy who isn’t getting any. He’s mad that other people are having sex, and not him. He shakes his fist in rage.
Also isolation. He needs to go live in a cave or hut somewhere away from everywhere, never speak again, and abstain from intercourse of any kind, ever. Also, no internet connection.
It would be a Good Work, and might make up for the horrible, festering stench he’s been exuding since I first heard about him.
Disgusting. In two paragraphs, Martin went from “kinda silly weirdo complaining about hard chairs and penguin whores” to “needs to be quarantined and never come into contact with any living thing ever again.”
I resent that he consumes oxygen that could support something more worthy of it than he is. Like tarantula wasps.
I understand why Steele would vehemently be opposed to accepting someone like Tom is apart of the same movement as him. I feel opposed to accepting that I’m the same species as that cretin.
apart = a part. I can’t type today to save my life. 🙁
@Pecunium
For real!! “deepness” *shudders*
THEY DON’T WANT HIM EITHER
Steele, when I find awful things in a group I belong to, I usually say something like “Wow, that sure is awful. That dude over there does not speak for all historians/Orthodox/gamers/nerds./white people. I’m going to work against that.” That’s way more productive than sticking your fingers in your ears and humming really loudly, which is what I see you’ve chosen to do.
I resent that he consumes oxygen that could support something more worthy of it than he is. Like tarantula wasps.
I sort of like tarantula wasps, though they are scary as fuck (true story: I was housesitting, and sitting in a chaise longue when all of a sudden I was flinging myself to the deck. A hummingbird was headed for the feeder I’d not noticed and I thought it was a tarantula wasp. Once I got over my terror it was a great place to sit and read).
But really, things like slime molds, and saprophytes and other useful creatures could make better use of the resources he has sequestered and the once is is using even now.
VoIP: They may not want him, but if he could find sincerity of heart, they would take him, in the hope hat introspection and contemplation would improve him.
Hope springs eternal.
I would love to see a sign that Steele is an active part of a MRM (the 2nd M is supposed to stand for Movement, after all) that condemns people like Berge and Martin, and actually works to drown them out. I’m afraid, on all counts, I see the opposite.
I just hope that 37000 quid goes towards rescuing child prostitutes or towards free, anonymous healthcare for sex workers.
@ Precunium- I think the problem is the whole “sincerity of heart” things. Usually our trolls have the complete opposite of that.
The MRM is not perfect- I have never claimed it was. There are cranks, kooks and assholes in it- as there are in any movement, including feminism (at a rather higher proportion, I would say). And regardless, the MRM is the only movement I am aware of that concerns itself with men’s issues; it’s the only movement that will hear me when I discuss the ways in which I have been disadvantaged, as a male. It is needed. I don’t deny there are growing pains- but it is needed.
I mean, seriously- you all just engaged in a 1000+ comment thread in which you denied the concept of misandry even exists. Feminism is, suffice to say, not a place where men’s issues and anti-male sentiments are going to be solved. And, well, that’s okay- but that’s why we have the MRM.