Anyone who has spent much time at all on MRA message boards knows that they tend to be littered with vague and ominous “predictions” of an inevitable violent backlash of men driven to fury by our supposed feminist overlords; some of these predictions are delivered with such obvious relish that they seem little more than justifications in advance for future murderous rampages on the part of people not too far distant in their ideology from Anders Breivik.
Of course, most of those making such predictions-cum-threats don’t want to actually face any culpability when their bullshit gets real. Fear not, MRA prognosticators, for one prominent British MRA has come up with what he sees as a brilliant way for MRAs to avoid getting implicated in future terrorists attacks. According to longtime MRA blogger Angry Harry we shouldn’t blame violence on the beliefs of right-wing terrorists – we should instead blame it on the people they’re mad at.
Angry Harry uses this bit of sophistry to explain away any culpability the right seems to have in the Norway massacre:
The recent massacre by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway is being portrayed by the left-wing media (such as the BBC) as being motivated by extreme right-wing groups – the idea, as ever, being to demonise and, hence, to intimidate, as much as possible, anybody who does not support their malicious self-serving agenda.
But if you look more closely at the evidence, it is quite clear that, if anything, it was the various machinations and rhetoric engaged in by the deceitful LEFT that infuriated this man. …
Quite simply, it is the Left, not the Right, who are the more to blame for this incident.
Ingenious. Of course, this logic only really works if you agree with the extremist ideology of the terrorist or murderer in question. Let’s apply Angry Harry’s approach to a historical example that also involved extremism and murder on a large scale:
Hitler hated Jews. Hitler killed Jews. Therefore, according to Angry Harry’s logic, we should blame the Jews for getting him so mad in the first place.
Is that unfair? Given that Breivik is a mass murderer with many ideas strikingly similar to those of Hitler, I think not. The logic is the same, whatever the body count.
Apparently Harry thinks his bit of rhetorical sleight-of-hand will absolve MRAs when, not if, the violence comes:
MRAs need to get to grips with this type of situation because it won’t be long before they are being blamed for something or other – perhaps a family court judge being murdered.
Why might this be a particularly sensitive issue for Harry? Perhaps because in another posting of his, he offered a justification for doing just that — murdering family court justices and those involved in enforcing their decisions.
In a post with the blunt title “Why Violence Is Often Justified,” Harry put it this way:
[A]nybody who takes away a man’s children and/or his home deserves little sympathy if they suffer significant retribution.
I suppose that for some men, arguing their case in court is a reasonable option, but for many men – particularly the less intelligent, the less wealthy, the less articulate and/or the less able they are to deal with officialdom – such an option is going to get them nowhere. And so, in my view, violence is not only understandable and predictable, but also morally quite justifiable.
To put it bluntly: If someone is taking away your home and your children then I think that you are quite justified in behaving violently towards them.
In his recent posting on Breivik, Harry offered an obligatory comment suggesting that, if course, he wasn’t actually justifying the Norwegian’s actions – oh, no! – even though the logic of his argument seems designed to do just that. Then he went on to make some predictions about what the future holds for his leftist and feminist enemies:
I think that it is fairly obvious to my most excellent readers that the war against the Left is hotting up. …
In fact, what I can never seem to understand is why it is taking so long for people – particularly for men – to rise up against the Left, given its appalling attitude and behaviour over the past two decades.
In combination with the feminists, the leftists have done their very best – with much success over here in Europe – to break up our countries, our cultures and our families, while at the same time heaping hatred upon hatred on to their very own people!
I just cannot understand how they have gotten away with this for so long.
You cannot go round continuing to display rigid intolerance and horrendous injustice against millions of men in your very own country and not expect some kind of violent backlash from them.
And matters are definitely going to get much worse.
He ends with a weasel-worded half-endorsement of this “violent backlash.”
The war against the Left will just continue escalating and, at some stage, with any luck, the leftists and the feminists will be defeated without too much carnage.
Well, that’s reassuring. Harry doesn’t want there to be “too much carnage.”
Which naturally leads to the question: just what does Harry regard as the right amount of carnage?
I hope we never have to find out.
