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.
You repeat the same tired old talking points in your echo chamber month after month.
We also post pictures of kitties.
And again, Pecunium, I’m done with you.
You keep using that phrase. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
I don’t know why I bothered here.
Because no one was paying attention to you over there?
Steele: In reality, you’re obsessive, for lack of a better word, “losers” who feel the need to hang around a vile hateblog hours a day, babbling about the same crap over and over again and patting each other on the back for doing so.
Who decided to make hundreds of comments in an attempt to convince us of his pet definition of misandry?
Who decided he needed to create a blog to “reveal the hate” here?
Who failed at both?
Who made stupidly structured claims about what draft based war was the costliest, then backpedaled and goalpost shifted until he’d painted himself into a corner he couldn’t get out of and then proceeded to lie (or pretend, if you prefer) about having responded to it.
We talk about all sorts of things, cats, anime, cooking, physics, sewing, fibre arts, clothing. We discuss history, fencing, woodworking, movies, whisk(e)y, guns. We share stories about places we’ve lived, or visited, and things we liked. We give each other tips, get together when we are in the same parts of the world. We engage in wordplay.
And we mock misogyny, and misogynists.
I don’t know what you do with the rest of your spare time, but all I’ve seen on the net is this sort of ranting; at which you are bad. Anti-manboobz is defunct. You went to r/mensrights to get a pat on the back (or to try and rally some support to continue a fight you were [and are still] losing), and they told you to stuff it.
You posted here, under your own name, and you flounced out, saying you were done with us. So you came back under another name. You said you were done talking to me, but you keep replying.
So who is the one “hanging around… [for] hours a day, babbling about the same crap, over and over”.
How many failed flounces is Steelepole up to now?
Manboobz is a hate blog, right?
Can you point out any comments by the posters that are as hateful as the things that Tom Martin wrote? Can you provide a direct link to any statement as repulsive as saying that starving 10 year olds are whores who do not deserve sympathy?
You’ve been here a week. Surely you have some evidence.
It’s like…using a firearm against a helpless aquatic creature trapped in some sort of wooden container, or something.
I admit, I am interested in Boobzland’s opinion of Arthur Goldwag’s post here:
https://arthurgoldwag.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/more-on-mens-rights-extremism/
If you want to be taken seriously as a civil rights activist, don’t call white people “crackers” or “honkies.” Only racists take the New Black Panthers seriously, for example (they have earned their place on the SPLC listing of hate groups).
Is Goldwag a racist? The SPLC?
ahahaahahahha oh steelphole butthorn I thought you didn’t dare comment on manboobz! Why the change of heart?
Tell you what, you speak directly to the questions I’ve asked regarding the activism of the MRM, its prominent activists like Berge and Martin, and what you specifically do to help men’s issues and I’ll be happy to provide my opinion on Goldwag’s post.
And it’ll be really relevant because I like manboobz, I’m a feminist, and I’m Black.
So you first.
Low Carbon Steele: And again, Pecunium, I’m done with you. You’re a pretentious, disingenuous jackass. You’ve proven that in spades over at AMBZ, so I don’t know why I bothered here.
In what… half a dozen comments? I must have really gotten up your nose.
You tried there to do what you tried to do here… 1: pretend that I wasn’t replying to your actual statements, and 2: insist that I accept your underlying ideas as the basis for my arguments. Which is what you were/are trying to do with Misandry.
You are no more honest here than you were in your own blog. But here you got response, which was more than you got at your blog.
Why? Because you are a crappy writer. You can’t keep your ideas in one line of thought and your conclusions aren’t supported by your premises.
In short, you are out of your depth. You, of course, don’t think so. You are convinced you are special, and it’s all the fault of women and feminists for keeping you down.
Right. Nothing, but nothing, kept you from working on your writing. You could (if the disapproval of women was too much for your noble soul to bear) found a male teacher. You could have read; thus to absorb the craft of those who have gone before. One of the great things about the modern [post about 1570] is the wealth of written material, it persists. I even gave you a list of books you might want to read, but there are millions, in print; right now, and billions in libraries, and used bookstores, just waiting for you to read).
But you choose to whine about how hard you’ve got it. You choose to pretend that the difficulties some men face are equal in weight to the problems women, as a class, labor under.
So you’re delusional, as well as silly.
I’m mad. I used to love a band called Steel Pole Bathtub, and now Steele/Pole is besmirching their hallowed name:
(I’m actually hanging out with the friend who introduced me to Steel Pole Bathtub, and he is laughing hysterically at this thread.)
And another:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peUeG3lkPuA
Well screw you for not embedding!
One more:
From the Goldwag article:
Tory Sheperd witheringly reduces MREs to “wounded angry men” who gather on the Internet to “foment trouble.” Maybe if some of them–including so many of the movement’s self-described leaders–weren’t so quick to fling their shit at everyone who looks at them cross-eyed, people in general would take the rest of the MRA community more seriously.
Why, one could argue that this is an implicit thumbs up! After all, he allows that people in general may, at some point in the future, take the MRA community more seriously. Of course, since very few people take their ideas seriously at present, that’s a pretty low bar. And since this is contingent on people like Paul Elam behaving like reasonable human beings, it seems a tad unlikely.
Tell you what, you speak directly to the questions I’ve asked regarding the activism of the MRM, its prominent activists like Berge and Martin, and what you specifically do to help men’s issues and I’ll be happy to provide my opinion on Goldwag’s post.
It puts a bad taste in my mouth to be using my charity and nonprofit work as a sort of bargaining chip, but then again that’s par for the course at Boobzland- that and Oppression Olympics. But- as I’ve said, I work with homeless people; since more men are homeless than women, I would consider this at least a somewhat gendered issue. I support the organization Just Detention:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Detention_International
… financially, and I have also donated my time. Since men make up the majority of prisoners and the vast majority of rapes in prison, this is also a gendered issue. And as I’ve said, I’ve contributed my writing to the MRM blogosphere.
The MRM as a network of individuals does much the same I do- they may also work on fathers’ behalf in the family courts. They may work with at-risk and/or depressed youth (again, mostly men). They may work with men and body image. This is actually something I’ve done as well, infrequently; when I was a child, I had severe body image issues and anorexia. There were, of course, no resources for me, as a male. The MRM works to change that. I could continue, but I’m tired of typing.
You’re right, much of the MRM online is political talk and such. That’s generally what the internet is used for. But there’s a lot going on in the real world, as well.
Oh, and…
In short, you are out of your depth.
Nah.
Well, way to torpedo the “movement” dude. Your writing is like a millstone around its neck.
Low Carbon Steele: In short, you are out of your depth.
Nah.
Another reply to me.
I wonder if the reason he tried so hard here (with me) is that I refused to play along over at AMB.
It puts a bad taste in my mouth to be using my charity and nonprofit work as a sort of bargaining chip, but then again that’s par for the course at Boobzland- that and Oppression Olympics.
Oh, I see. Too good to talk about your supposed charity work with the likes of us, eh? Steelepole, I am mortally offended! That does it, I’m done with you! Done with you, I say!
Steele does not appear to understand his role here. Dear sir – you are the subject of mockery, and you have failed to convince anyone of anything. This is not because people here are unwilling to listen to persuasive arguments – it’s because you are a terrible writer. Perhaps you should focus your efforts in terms of activism on areas in which you have some sort of skill, because you’re certainly not doing your movement any favors by writing about it so poorly.
So do I. What a coincidence. So, how do you feel about the fact that so few MRAs with blogs write about and/or link to Just Detention’s site? I also work with homeless shelters but most of the programs that I’ve worked with have been exclusively male and focused on the dual issues of homelessness and substance abuse.
I also work directly with programs that focus on incarcerated juveniles. Young men for now, but I’m hoping that one of the organizations will expand its scope to include young women in the near future. In the next few years I’ll be working with other like minded people (men and women) to create a charter school based on the model provided by the Excellence Boys Charter School of Bedford Stuyvesant. I’m also an urban cub scout leader.
You’re writing is, by your own admission, pretty subpar and not much of a contribution. But it’s good to to know that you support Just Detention.
What is it, do you think, that prevents the disparate and individual good actors of the MRM from organizing away from the Berges and Martins of your movement and committing to real and organized activism? I think it’s because you’re lazy and, on a gut level, consider the work of organizing beneath you. It can’t be because it’s too difficult.
So, if you can just address the issue of prominent activists like Berge and Martin, I’ll be happy to offer my opinion on the Goldwag piece.
This is not because people here are unwilling to listen to persuasive arguments – it’s because you are a terrible writer.
Nah.
Who are you again? I remember you vaguely as someone who keeps brainlessly pontificating on my alleged lack of writing skills, but I’m unclear as to exactly why I should give a rip.
What is it, do you think, that prevents the disparate and individual good actors of the MRM from organizing away from the Berges and Martins of your movement and committing to real and organized activism? I think it’s because you’re lazy and, on a gut level, consider the work of organizing beneath you. It can’t be because it’s too difficult.
I don’t see any evidence that they aren’t. It’s not on the MRM to create a big neon sign kicking out specific individuals. We will see how the Movement reacts to Martin’s child rape apologia; this information is recent.
Give it up Steele, you are the one who followed pecunium here because he would not comment on your blog that very few people hung out on.
Oh, so you’ve forgotten that you admitted yourself that your writing is poor and that it breaks your heart, and is your reason for believing so strongly in misandry? Memory loss is an unfortunate thing.
How could anyone accuse the MRM of laziness when its members regularly engage in so much hypothetical activism?
I don’t see any evidence that they are. Both men have been lauded as activists by several mainstream MRM blogs and writers.
I’m sorry, perhaps I’m not being specific enough. See, long before presenting himself as a child rape apologist, Martin was running all around the internet -and the real world for that matter- calling all women whores. And his failed lawsuit against the gender studies program notwithstanding, I can’t see how that helps the MRM organize or even begins to address legitimate men’s issues. And Berge was talking about how rape should be legal and wanting to kill police officers long before his recent arrest.
So, again, how does this help the MRM? Why isn’t it the responsibility of the non-violent movement you describe to publicly disassociate itself from these activists?
Again, why in this advanced age of communication can those individuals doing good work not get together and present a comprehensive platform and strategy?