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Spinning the Eivind Berge arrest: Reddit vs. The Spearhead

Berge: Too provocative for his own good?

The spinning of Norwegian Men’s Rights blogger Eivind Berge’s arrest for threatening police officers has begun.

Over on Reddit, the leading hangout for the Men’s Rights movement’s  “moderates,” most MRAs seem to want to have nothing to do with Berge’s extremism (which is good), to the extent that many of them are declaring him not an MRA at all (which is ridiculous).

Sorry, guys. Berge may literally be the world’s worst MRA, and one that most MRAs have been content to ignore, but he’s still an MRA. He’s described himself as such many times (e.g., here); he has many of the same views and obsessions as “mainstream” MRAs; and he’s even got a few outspoken MRA fans.  And while some Reddit Men’s Rightsers were distancing themselves from Berge in the wake of his arrest, others were respectfully discussing a blog post from Berge’s girlfriend Emma the Emo (who shares many of his views) taking aim at what she called “American pedophile hysteria.”

Over on the Spearhead, the more reactionary W.F. Price has a rather different spin on Berge, as encapsulated by the title of his blog post on the subject: “Eivind Berge Arrested for Provocative Rhetoric.”

Evidently, threatening to stab a police officer (and announcing the day on which you plan to do so) is merely a sort of rhetorical flourish.

It’s a strange and often incoherent post, in which Price seems to argue that Berge’s threats don’t count as real threats because … he made them publicly? Here, you make sense of it:

Eivind Berge has been posting some pretty provocative stuff for quite a while now, including his desire to kill police for enforcing misandric laws. I agree with his girlfriend that it was a bunch of hot air, but he got arrested for it anyway. Despite his support for Anders Breivik, who decimated the youth wing of the Marxist/Islamist Norwegian left in a solo Knights Templar crusade last year, I seriously doubt Eivind would have carried out any violent acts. Breivik, who really meant business, kept his plans to himself.

The truth is that people who manage to pull off spectacular terrorist attacks are almost always those who don’t say anything about them beforehand. Think Mohammed Atta vs. James Ujaama.

Yeah, it’s not like Osama bin Laden ever made threats about attacking the US. Or that abusers who threaten their exes ever actually harm them. Or any of a million other examples in which someone who issues a threat carries out said threat.

The lesson here is that if you want to be political, there’s a sort of tortoise/hare dynamic at work. The impetuous, fast hare tends to run out of steam (or run into trouble with the law) fairly quickly. The slow-and-steady tortoise, on the other hand, keeps trudging on and wins the race. …

[T]hreatening to kill people openly and loudly is essentially worthless.

Is Price really equating terrorists who plot their attacks secretly with the slow-and-steady tortoise who wins the race?

Who the hell knows. But he is clearly offering an apologia for making violent threats on the dubious grounds that those who threaten their enemies openly are somehow therefore not dangerous.

Later Price offers this completely clear cut and definitive repudiation of violence.*

We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that violent action will do us any good. Of course violence does work, but the power of the state is so overwhelming today that individual acts are almost certain to fail. Furthermore, those who are willing to unleash violence on others must be prepared to die themselves, and must lead by example. Somehow, I don’t think many of us have reached that point. It’s a long road to get there, and I hold out the hope that it will never go that far.

[T]he point is that anyone who condones violent action loudly and publicly, but doesn’t back it up, can’t be taken seriously.

In the comments, Eric complains that men who commit violence for putatively political reasons may suffer the indignity of being called bad names:

As we have all seen repeatedly, violence against men is socially and politically sanctioned violence. A man committing violence in defense of his rights is labelled a ‘terrorist’ or an ‘extremist’. The case of Thomas Ball is a perfect example. …

The feminist elites are bullies who are aware of their power and our inability to ‘push back’ in any way that will cause them deserved pain (at least for now). But like all bullies, they are also rabid egomaniacs and fear anyone who doesn’t bow slavishly to their power. The more men who are informed as to their true nature and who are taught to despise them, the weaker these bullies become because their fear of exposure and losing their power is a mania.

I guess Eric’s main beef is with the English language. I’m pretty sure that using violence to cause “deserved pain” in an attempt to intimidate your political enemies is basically the dictionary definition of “terrorism.”

Further down in the comments, Eric sets forth a curious little conspiracy theory involving, well, me. In one comment, he suggests that the attention I’ve given to the Berge arrest

illustrates that the anti-MRM forces are primed and ready for a ‘false flag’ or provocateur-instigated ‘incident’. … The feminist elites have noticably shifted from typical ridicule to painting the MRM as a dangerous extremist movement.”

In a followup comment, he elaborates on this peculiar logic:

Futrelle … does seem unusally worked up. …

I have the feeling that something ominous is in the wind.

This kind of language out of the Mangina League; the SPLC’s attention; the spate of troll and provocateur attacks and hacking on mens’ blogs; this crap going on in Scandanavia—there’s definately a pole-shift among our enemies and it stinks of orchestration.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t make up many years worth of threatening comments from Eivind “killing at least one cop is on my bucket list” Berge. So does this mean that Berge is some sort of deep-cover feminist operative? What does that make Paul “fucking your shit up gives me an erection” Elam?

*

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Crumbelievable
Crumbelievable
12 years ago

– Fewer reproductive rights for women
– Even greater struggles for rape victims to get justice
– Public harassment will be taken even less seriously than it is now
– According to some (like Factory, Paul Elam, Thomas Ball) possibly lots of bloodshed

I can`t wait!

Effie
Effie
12 years ago

For once I agree with what NWOSlave says. The FY2012 NDAA is a VERY bad thing. Essentially, a section of it gives the Executive Branch the power to have the US military indefinitely detain US citizens without charge or trial in a military prison if the government says “that person is a terrorist.” Congress passed it despite loud objections from politicians, leaders, and legal scholars from all over the ideological spectrum. For his part, POTUS had said that if NDAA passed both the House and the Senate with the indefinite detention provisions intact, he would veto. He did not veto. He signed the NDAA on New Year’s Eve with a statement about how very sad he was that he had to sign it.

Thankfully, Federal Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York ruled on May 16 that the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA violate the 1st and 5th Amendment, and must be enjoined. The Obama Administration is, as expected, appealing the decision. You can read about the case here:

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/16/federal_court_enjoins_ndaa/

While it is important for all U.S. citizens to know and understand the implications of the NDAA (ie, major Unitary Executive Power consolidation in violation of the Constitution), what any of this has to do with a post about violent MRAs and Berge’s credible death threats against a police officer baffles me.

BlueBee
BlueBee
12 years ago

Didn’t Emma the Emo comment on one of the posts here, or am I just severely confused?

Snowy
Snowy
12 years ago

No, she’s commented here before not that much but definitely in at least a few threads.

Argenti Aertheri
Argenti Aertheri
12 years ago

Effie — did anyone actually argue that NDAA was a good thing though? Or just that NWO’s pulling this out of his ass — “And what makes a citizen a suspected terrorist? Speaking out against the govenrment. Stockpiling more than 7 days worth of food. Owning more than 1 gun.”

NWO does sometimes manage to get one of his premises right, he then takes it to an absurd conclusion though. (I mean, just yesterday he was going on about how women wanting to go topless is just like showing his woody to little girls…for your own sake, you may not want to see that, but it starts here)

NDAA is definitely creepy evil though (hey NWO, I just called a thing creepy, does that prove NDAA is male?)

Cliff Pervocracy
12 years ago

Effie – I actually totally agree about NDAA.

I just think it’s funny that NWO presumably has no idea what it is (except a Bad Government Thing, presumably feminist) and brought it up at complete random.

Effie
Effie
12 years ago

Argenti – I can’t say whether NWO’s opinion of what the government defines as a terrorist is correct or not, because the government refuses to ever clearly define it in court proceedings or ever answer questions about it. For instance, did you know that the PATRIOT Act has a classified interpretation? I wish NWO weren’t so paranoid and hateful, because, as you say, the basic premise of some things he says actually have merit (if awfully random like this one) and I would love to have an intelligent discussion about them. Sadly, I think we all know by now that is impossible.

Cliff – Precisely, apparently the government’s definition of “terrorist” is a white male. Because FEMINISM! Or something.

(This is the part where I lolsob at NWO’s refusal to consider that all those women’s clinic bombings, shootings, doctor and nurse and escort stalking, etc have never been prosecuted as terrorism cases by the government, despite typically being instigated, orchestrated, and performed by individuals and groups whose sole purpose is to terrorize women and doctors from procuring and performing legal medical procedures.)

Argenti Aertheri
Argenti Aertheri
12 years ago

Effie — yeah this time he’s not even wrong. My point was more “oh gods please don’t encourage him” than anything remotely pro-NDAA or PATRIOT act — at least back when I was getting called a terrorist for hating PATRIOT act there wasn’t any real threat to that nonsense.

Technically though, yeah, one could claim that anything is terrorism under NDAA and be not even wrong; which is, of course, why it is full of dangerous fail.

cloudiah
12 years ago

I agree with you too, Effie, on NDAA. But I’m pretty sure I know where NWO is getting his info from…

Hershele Ostropoler
12 years ago

Effie:

I can’t say whether NWO’s opinion of what the government defines as a terrorist is correct or not, because the government refuses to ever clearly define it in court proceedings or ever answer questions about it.

Then it’s not, because his claim is that there is a law out there saying if you speak out against the government, you are a terrorist. A law saying if you have a week’s worth of food, you are a terrorist. A law passed by Republican lawmakers saying that if you own more than one gun you’re a terrorist. So the opposite of what you said.

I’m no more a fan of the NDAA than anyone else here, but it doesn’t say what he says it does. It actually makes me wonder if he’s even capable of being right about something.

Argenti Aertheri
Argenti Aertheri
12 years ago

“It actually makes me wonder if he’s even capable of being right about something.”

I would hope he can manage to be right about the sort of things you don’t bother specifying while RP’ing — like whether the ceiling is up or not. Of course, he does think all women dress like it’s spring break (and youtube worthy spring break no less) — so I half wouldn’t be surprised if up is down…in fact, I think he claimed that feminists think that, so yeah…

Effie — you may not know this, but NWO is highly prone to completely BS legal claims, and then refusing to cite them, Hershele’s waiting on a whole list of them, NWO has until the end of 2012 and continues to ignore the request for citation. (Hershele, it might be time to remind him, again, of what that list is)

Hershele Ostropoler
12 years ago

Argenti, I think it might

Pecunium
12 years ago

Let me see if I have this straight…

Real threats to public order don’t make threats in public, so Berge isn’t much of a threat, and the impetuous threats get in trouble with the law before they manage to carry anything out, so Berge ought to have been ignored, because he made threats in public, and got arrested. Because he got in trouble with the law we therefore know he’s not a real threat and he ought not have gotten trouble with the law, since he can’t have been a slow and steady tortoise because he got caught which proves he’s not real threat and …

My head hurts and I’m about to puke from all the spinning.