DOCSLIB.ORG

How a Feminist Once Hailed by Gloria Steinem Launched the Men's Rights

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
How a Feminist Once Hailed by Gloria Steinem Launched the Men's Rights MAD MEN how a feminist once hailed by gloria steinem launched the men’s rights movement—and inspired an army of haters and trolls by mariah blake photograph by winni wintermeyer On a balmy afternoon last June, dozens of demon- strators carrying “Stop the Violence” and “Rape is Rape” placards descended on the Hilton Double- Tree in downtown Detroit. They had come to pro- test the first-ever national gathering of the men’s rights movement, which aims to battle discrimina- tion against men but has drawn criticism for stirring up hatred of women. Two weeks earlier, a sexually frustrated 22-year-old named Elliot Rodger had gone on a suicidal rampage in Santa Barbara, Cali- fornia, killing 6 people and injuring 13. He had left behind a chilling 137-page manifesto suffused with a bitter misogyny and language commonly found in men’s rights forums. “The girls don’t flock to the gentlemen. They flock to the alpha male,” Rodger wrote. “Who’s the alpha male now, bitches?” His at- tack ignited a firestorm online, spurring women to share their experiences of misogyny via the hashtag #YesAllWomen, and bringing major media atten- tion to the men’s rights movement. With irate phone calls and even death threats pouring into the hotel in the run-up to the confer- ence, its organizer, A Voice for Men, was forced to move the event to a local Veterans of Foreign Wars hall. The group warned ticket holders by email that “ideological opponents” were likely to show up, and that they would be “looking for anything they can to hurt us with.” When conference goers arrived several weeks later, they were greeted by a cadre of burly security guards. A computer glitch at the check-in desk sent the line snaking into the parking lot, where some men lounged listlessly on the hot asphalt. Finally, about an hour and a half after the first workshop JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 | MOTHER JONES 17 MAD MEN had been scheduled to begin, the doors spawned a network of activists and sites We were sitting poolside at Farrell’s swung open. The crowd clattered up the that take Farrell’s ideology in a disturbing home, a wood-shingled bungalow over- stairs to a dimly lit room with scuffed mint- direction. Men’s rights forums on sites like looking San Francisco Bay in the hills of colored walls and a water-stained ceiling. 4chan and Reddit are awash in misogyny tony Marin County. As his personal as- There, amid rows of folding chairs, stood and anti-feminist vitriol. Participants argue sistant served us a mélange of roasted veg- Warren Farrell. that false allegations of rape and domestic etables sprinkled with pine nuts, Farrell, A soft-spoken septuagenarian with a abuse are rampant, or that shelters for bat- who has a warm and thoughtful air, mused silver beard and delicate hands, Farrell tered women are a financial scam. Others about his walks in the woods with John explained with a smile why he’d asked rail against women for being independent Gray, author of the best-selling book Men the security team to stand down: “I said or sexually promiscuous. Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. He it didn’t look like there were any killers These ideas have given rise to aggressive and Gray recently landed a contract for a out there.” There was a burst of laughter. tactics and rhetoric. The National Coali- sequel called Beyond Mars and Venus, which After a while, he asked everyone to stand tion for Men—whose board of advisers in- will lay out Farrell’s evolving utopian view up. “Put anything you have in your hands cludes Farrell—has fought to cut off state of gender relations. “We’re all interested in down and just give that person in front funding for domestic-violence programs beyond Mars and Venus,” he explained. of you a nice shoulder rub,” he said. Ten- if men aren’t included. A Voice for Men’s “That’s the search for the unique self.” sion faded from the men’s faces. Over the founder, Paul Elam, who is a friend and next several hours, Farrell doled out hugs, protégé of Farrell’s, has justified violence Farrell traces his interest in gender issues to regaled them with stories about his days as against women and written that some of his childhood. His mother had given up a a feminist icon, and waxed lyrical about them “walk through life with the equiva- scholarship to Cornell to find a husband, fatherhood and male sacrifice. He also in- lent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING but being a housewife made her miserable. vited the men to share their personal pain. BITCH—PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign “I had seen her move in and out of depres- Some wept as they spoke. glowing above their empty little narcissis- sion,” Farrell later wrote. “Into depression Farrell is widely considered to be the fa- tic heads.” Other activists have published when she was not working, out of depres- ther of the men’s rights movement. In a se- names of women they consider enemies sion when she was working.” His mother ries of books published since the 1980s, he and have praised online stalkers, such as took medication to ward off the gloom, has made the case that the primary victims the “Gamergate” mobs who bombard but it made her dizzy and prone to stum- bling. She died at age 48 after falling in the garage one day and hitting her head. Farrell was still reeling from the loss when in farrell’s workshop, the men he moved to New York in the late 1960s to pursue a doctorate in political science pumped their biceps and swiveled and encountered the fledgling women’s movement. He shifted his research focus their hips while farrell led the to feminism and joined the board of the National Organization for Women’s New women in chants of “shirts off! York City chapter, which made him a hot commodity. “Feminists were constantly shirts off!” and “slut! slut! slut!” asking, ‘How can we clone you?’” he re- called. “At parties, women would plop me down in front of their husbands with in- of gender-based discrimination are men— feminist critics with rape and death threats. structions to ‘tell him what you told me.’” casualties of a society that relies on their Farrell told me that these tactics make NOW tapped Farrell to organize a na- sacrifices while ignoring their suffering. He him uncomfortable, but he argues that all tionwide network of men’s consciousness blames this phenomenon for a litany of movements have—and need—their extreme groups, including one that he told me was woes, from the plight of blue-collar workers factions. “I’ve been through the move- attended by John Lennon. In these ses- to the state of veterans’ health care and ris- ments,” he said. “I’ve seen how Martin sions, and in his popular 1974 book, The ing suicide rates among young men. Many Luther King alone was dismissed. It took Liberated Man, Farrell argued that women of today’s men’s rights activists view Farrell’s Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver were not the only ones hindered by sex- 1993 book, The Myth of Male Power: Why to say things that were pretty ridiculous in ism: Gender roles hurt men too, by forcing Men Are the Disposable Sex, as their touch- some ways, but that brought the attention them to shoulder the financial burden of stone, and the online forums where they that led to Martin Luther King being seen supporting families and stifle their emo- congregate are steeped in Farrell’s ideas. as the nice, centered, balanced person.” He tions. Soon Farrell was burning up the talk For some, the “manosphere” offers a also cited the SCUM Manifesto written by show circuit and mingling with the likes of place to air real grievances about issues 1960s feminist Valerie Solanas, who shot Gloria Steinem and Barbara Walters. People such as bias in family courts or sexual Andy Warhol. “SCUM means ‘Society for ran a glowing four-page spread with photos abuse suffered by men. But it also has Cutting Up Men,’” he noted. of Farrell cooking breakfast in his Upper 18 MOTHER JONES | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 From top left: Farrell cooking dinner for his then-wife, Ursula, in 1972; crowning the winner of a “male beauty pageant” on TV as Alan Alda looks on; posing in 1987 with Gloria Steinem. West Side apartment and tossing a foot- ball in a park with his then-wife, Ursula, a Harvard-educated mathematician and rising IBM executive. The Financial Times named Farrell one of its 100 “top thought leaders,” while other papers hailed him as also shaking up family dynamics and turn- Penthouse, Farrell explained that some saw “the Gloria Steinem of Men’s Liberation.” ing divorce into a political issue. NOW came incest as “part of the family’s open, sensu- Farrell’s calling card during this era was out in favor of awarding child custody to al style of life, wherein sex is an outgrowth role-reversal workshops. In one session at the primary caregiver, in most cases the of warmth and affection.” The magazine a Tony Robbins seminar in Hawaii, he mother. Farrell, who was by then teaching also quoted him as saying that “genitally made the 100-plus men in attendance at Rutgers University, came to believe that caressing” children was “part of a caring, gather on the stage for a beauty pageant.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Systemic Misogyny Exposed: Translating Rapeglish from the Manosphere with a Random Rape Threat Generator
    ICS0010.1177/1367877917734042International Journal of Cultural StudiesJane 734042research-article2017 International Journal of Cultural Studies 1 –20 © The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877917734042 10.1177/1367877917734042 journals.sagepub.com/home/ics Article Systemic misogyny exposed: Translating Rapeglish from the Manosphere with a Random Rape Threat Generator Emma A Jane University of New South Wales, Australia Abstract Misogyny online in forms such as explicit rape threats has become so prevalent and rhetorically distinctive it resembles a new dialect or language. Much of this ‘Rapeglish’ is produced by members of an informal alliance of men’s groups online dubbed the ‘Manosphere’. As both a cyberhate researcher and cyberhate target, I have studied as well as contributed to feminist responses to Rapeglish. In 2016, for instance, I helped build a Random Rape Threat Generator (RRTG) – a computer program that splices, shuffles around, and re-stitches in novel combinations fragments of real-life Rapeglish to illustrate the formulaic, machine- like, and impersonal nature of misogynist discourse online. This article uses Yuri Lotman’s ideas about intra- and inter-cultural conflict involving something akin to the translation of a foreign language to frame the RRTG as one example of the way women are ‘talking back’ both to and with Rapeglish (the latter involving appropriations and subversions of the original discourse). Keywords cyberhate, feminism, Gamergate, Yuri Lotman, Manosphere, Men’s Rights Activists (MRA), Men’s Rights Movement (MRM), pick-up artists (PUAs), rape threats, trolling Corresponding author: Emma A Jane, Webster 115, School of the Arts and Media, University of New South Wales, 2052, New South Wales, Australia.
    [Show full text]
  • The Divergent Archive and Androcentric Counterpublics: Public Rhetorics, Memory, and Archives
    THE DIVERGENT ARCHIVE AND ANDROCENTRIC COUNTERPUBLICS: PUBLIC RHETORICS, MEMORY, AND ARCHIVES BY EVIN SCOTT GROUNDWATER DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2020 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Kelly Ritter, Chair Associate Professor Peter Mortensen Assistant Professor John Gallagher Associate Professor Jessica Enoch, University of Maryland ii ABSTRACT As a field, Writing Studies has long been concerned with the rhetorical representation of both dominant and marginalized groups. However, rhetorical theory on publics and counterpublics tends not to articulate how groups persuade others of their status as mainstream or marginal. Scholars of public/counterpublic theory have not yet adequately examined the mechanisms through which rhetorical resources play a role in reinforcing and/or dispelling public perceptions of dominance or marginalization. My dissertation argues many counterpublics locate and convince others of their subject status through the development of rhetorical resources. I contend counterpublics create and curate a diffuse system of archives, which I refer to as “divergent archives.” These divergent archives often lack institutional backing, rigor, and may be primarily composed of ephemera. Drawing from a variety of archival materials both within and outside institutionally maintained archives, I explore how counterpublics perceiving themselves as marginalized construct archives of their own as a way to transmit collective memories reifying their nondominant status. I do so through a case study that has generally been overlooked in Writing Studies: a collection of men’s rights movements which imagine themselves to be marginalized, despite their generally hegemonic positions.
    [Show full text]
  • Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis CONTENTS
    Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis CONTENTS Executive Summary ....................................................... 1 What Techniques Do Media Manipulators Use? ....... 33 Understanding Media Manipulation ............................ 2 Participatory Culture ........................................... 33 Who is Manipulating the Media? ................................. 4 Networks ............................................................. 34 Internet Trolls ......................................................... 4 Memes ................................................................. 35 Gamergaters .......................................................... 7 Bots ...................................................................... 36 Hate Groups and Ideologues ............................... 9 Strategic Amplification and Framing ................. 38 The Alt-Right ................................................... 9 Why is the Media Vulnerable? .................................... 40 The Manosphere .......................................... 13 Lack of Trust in Media ......................................... 40 Conspiracy Theorists ........................................... 17 Decline of Local News ........................................ 41 Influencers............................................................ 20 The Attention Economy ...................................... 42 Hyper-Partisan News Outlets ............................. 21 What are the Outcomes? ..........................................
    [Show full text]
  • The New Demagogues
    THE NEW DEMAGOGUES Edited by Joshua M. Roose First published 2021 ISBN: 978-1-138-36469-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-36470-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-43119-7 (ebk) Chapter 4 MALE SUPREMACISM Joshua M. Roose (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) This OA chapter is funded by Deakin University. 4 MALE SUPREMACISM Introduction The third thesis explored in this book requires an exploration of how displays of populist hyper-masculinity, irrespective of the local context, are indicative of deep- seated social injury and wounded masculine pride. In framing masculinity, it argues that alienation of and anxiety amongst working and, increasingly, middle-class men are key contributors to new populist movements, resulting in misogyny and resentment toward women amongst a small, though potentially increasing, segment of the community. This is reflected in the political discourse of the new demago- gues. The chapter commences by outlining contemporary scholarly approaches to the intersection of masculinity and the new populism, followed by an exploration of the role played by anxiety and alienation in shaping the attraction to new populist movements. I then explore contemporary developments, focusing in par- ticular upon the emergence of targeted political violence directed towards women on the basis of gender. I develop the concept of ideological masculinity, which may go some way to explaining the phenomenon of male supremacism, and explore important clues as to its prevalence in the wider community. Masculinity and the new populism The concept of masculinity, understood here as ‘the social construction of what it is to be a man’ (Kimmel & Bridges 2011), invites us to view actors who have been cast in the public imagination as inherently malevolent and fanatical as both human and subject to social processes.
    [Show full text]
  • Mapping the Alt-Right and the Manosphere:
    The Discursive Style and Reactionary Politics of the Manosphere by Selena Neumark Hermann B.A., University of British Columbia, 2015 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the School of Communication Faculty of Communication, Arts and Technology © Selena Neumark Hermann 2019 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Summer 2019 Copyright in this work rests with the author. Please ensure that any reproduction or re-use is done in accordance with the relevant national copyright legislation. Approval Name: Selena Neumark Hermann Degree: Master of Arts Title: The Discursive Style and Reactionary Politics of the Manosphere Examining Committee: Chair: Sun-Ha Hong Assistant Professor Stuart Poyntz Senior Supervisor Associate Professor Frederik Lesage Supervisor Associate Professor Enda Brophy Internal Examiner Associate Professor Date Defended/Approved: June 13, 2019 ii Abstract This study aims to unpack the styles of discourse adopted and implemented by the Manosphere, an online community of self described Men's Rights Activists (MRAs) and “Red Pillers”. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis of Manosphere texts, the research explores how issues of gender and race inform the culture and politics of the community. It identifies common linguistic markers that distinguish the Manosphere from the historical Men's Rights Movement and liken it instead, to the the Alt-Right movement. For example, devices like metaphor, hyperbole and dog whistles operate in the discourse as modes for negotiating meaning making and accelerating the dissemination of extreme right discourse in mainstream political spaces. I argue that this process in part explains why particularly since 2016 and the election of Donald Trump in the United States, political sentiment has become more open to the iterations of misogyny and racism emblematic of the Manosphere.
    [Show full text]
  • Meet the Men Giving up on Women They Don’T Want Girlfriends, They Don’T Want Children — They Don’T Even Want to Have Sex
    U.K. – November 15, 2015 Meet the men giving up on women They don’t want girlfriends, they don’t want children — they don’t even want to have sex. The secretive MGTOW movement is a fast-growing online community of disillusioned males. But are they misogynists or misunderstood? MARTIN DAUBNEY tracks some of them down Part I David Sherratt, 18, is a chemistry student at Cardiff University. He has never had a girlfriend and isn’t planning on finding one. Not now. Not ever. “Hook-up sex is too risky for words,” he says. “Girls can wake up the next day and claim you raped them. I’m genuinely too scared to go near a woman — just in case. At university, I’m made to feel like a rapist all the time… I’ve never had a relationship and I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon. It’s just too dangerous.” Neither does he see the point of marriage, since half of them end in divorce. “Marriage is like playing Russian roulette with three bullets in the cylinder” he says firmly. “I’ve never been interested in having kids since I learnt about the lack of fathers’ rights. The whole system is stacked against men. Our generation has been screwed over by feminism. People might say it’s sad, but I’m checking out.” It would be all too easy to scoff at David’s comments and dismiss him as just another angry teenager. But an increasingly militant anti-lad culture in our universities, complete with sexual-consent classes, is causing young men such as David great concern.
    [Show full text]
  • Narrative Warfare: the 'Careless' Reinterpretation of Literary Canon
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE This is the accepted manuscript of the article, which has been published in Narrativeprovided by Trepo Inquiry - Institutional. 2019,Repository of Tampere University 29(2), 313-332. https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.19019.nur Narrative Warfare: The ‘Careless’ Reinterpretation of Literary Canon in Online Antifeminism Matias Nurminen, Tampere University This article studies the use of literature and narrative strategies of online antifeminist movements. These movements classified under the umbrella term the manosphere, wage ideological narrative warfare to endorse a misogynistic worldview. The case at hand concentrates on the radical faction of neomasculinity and its attempts to reinterpret the Western canon of literature. I propose that neomasculine readings of novels such as Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita are careless interpretations that ground themselves on specific traits of the texts while ignoring others. These readings attempt to evoke a sense of recognition in the community that believes in an alleged feminist conspiracy against men. Careless interpretations borrow from post-truth rhetoric and the feminist literary theory tradition of reading against the grain. When confronted over their controversial views, neomasculine figures renarrativize readings to benefit the promotion of neomasculine perspectives. This strategic use of literature is part of the narrative warfare discussed in detail. Keywords: manosphere, resistant reading, post-truth, instrumental narratives, antifeminism, literary canon 1 Introduction This article analyses how online antifeminist movements, often classified under the umbrella term the manosphere, wage ideological narrative warfare to endorse a misogynistic worldview. The case at hand concentrates on neomasculinity, a particularly radical faction that has also been studied in classicist Donna Zuckerberg’s recent book Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age (2018).
    [Show full text]
  • Masculinities in Cyberspace: an Analysis of Portrayals of Manhood in Men’S Rights Activist Websites
    social sciences $€ £ ¥ Article Masculinities in Cyberspace: An Analysis of Portrayals of Manhood in Men’s Rights Activist Websites Rachel M. Schmitz 1,* and Emily Kazyak 2 1 Department of Sociology & Anthropology, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX 78539, USA 2 Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +1-402-640-0336 Academic Editors: Christine M. Robinson and Sue Spivey Received: 12 April 2016; Accepted: 6 May 2016; Published: 12 May 2016 Abstract: A growth in cultural ideologies concerned with men and masculinities in contemporary American society has recently emerged. Men’s rights activist (MRA) groups embody a movement emphasizing the crisis of masculinity. Despite men’s privileged societal status, MRAs seek to establish resources for men to utilize in elevating their perceived subordinated position in society in relation to women and social minorities. Little research has systematically investigated MRAs on the Internet, which is rapidly becoming a primary source of information and social connectedness for people. Through a content analysis of the 12 most prominent MRA websites, we explore the various strategies used by contemporary men’s groups designed to provide support for men in their pursuit of social legitimacy and power. Two primary categories of MRAs with distinctive ideological strategies emerged from this analysis: Cyber Lads in Search of Masculinity and Virtual Victims in Search of Equality. Though both groups promoted men’s entitlement to social power, Cyber Lads utilized themes of explicit aggression towards and devaluation of women, while Virtual Victims adopted political and social movement rhetoric to address men’s issues.
    [Show full text]
  • The Public Eye, Summer 2018
    SUMMER 2018 The Public Eye In this issue: Blurring the Border: Immigration Enforcement and Solidarity in Ohio Before the Alt Right: Anita Hill and the Growth of Misogynist Ideology Beyond Strange Bedfellows: How the “War on Trafficking” Was Made to Unite the Left and Right Trump, the Republican Party, and Westmoreland County editor’s letter THE PUBLIC EYE QUARTERLY With the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, the bal- PUBLISHER Tarso Luís Ramos ance of the Supreme Court threatens to tip toward the Hard Right for decades to come. Com- EDITOR ing on the heels of several disastrous SCOTUS rulings, the administration’s cruel family sep- Kathryn Joyce aration policy, and Trump’s continuing embrace of authoritarianism, the stakes couldn’t be COVER ART higher. There are immediate threats to reproductive and sexual health and rights, commu- “The Love Series #17” by Rae Senarighi nities of color and immigrants, workers and voters alike, as well as longer-term repercus- PRINTING sions yet to be seen. Red Sun Press Nearly 30 years ago, another fierce and pivotal SCOTUS battle took place over the con- EDITORIAL BOARD firmation of Justice Clarence Thomas. As Alex DiBranco writes in “Before the Alt Right” Frederick Clarkson • Alex DiBranco (pg. 5), when law professor Anita Hill alleged that Thomas had egregiously sexually ha- Gabriel Joffe • Kapya Kaoma rassed her, her testimony helped launch an early reckoning over gender discrimination in Greeley O’Connor • L. Cole Parke Tarso Luís Ramos • Zeina Zaatari the workplace. But it also inspired a generation of conservative activists who advanced a secular form of anti-feminism, complementing the Christian Right’s scriptural case against The Public Eye is published by gender equality with vicious personal attacks.
    [Show full text]
  • 'The World Is Not a Safe Place for Men': the Representational Politics Of
    ‘The World is Not a Safe Place for Men’: The Representational Politics of the Manosphere Mary Lilly Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies In fulfillment of the requirements for the MA in Political Science Faculty of Social Sciences University of Ottawa © Mary Lilly, Ottawa, Canada, 2016 Abstract This thesis offers an overview of the representational politics of the online antifeminist community known as the ‘manosphere’. It ana- lyzes how gender and gender politics are represented in the discourse, with an eye to how traditional gender constructs, and traditional gen- dered norms and inequalities, are reproduced. This project—the first study to focus exclusively on the mano- sphere—contributes to our understanding of the community in two ways; it addresses a significant gap in the literature on the topic, and it tests the accuracy of the ‘conventional wisdom’ on the manosphere. Using mixed-methods critical discourse analysis, the study ana- lyzed the discourse of the two primary subcultures of the community, and found that traditional gender norms and relations are reproduced therein, and that for the most part the conventional wisdom is accu- rate: femininity and women are disparaged, masculinity is imagined to be ‘in crisis’ (constantly under siege by feminizing forces), and feminism is represented as hypocritical and oppressive. ii Acknowledgements A thank you to my supervisor, Paul Saurette, who supported me when I needed support, challenged me when I needed to be chal- lenged, for his invaluable guidance, compassion, and expertise, and for all he has helped me to learn over the past almost three years.
    [Show full text]
  • CTRL-ALT-DELETE the Origins and Ideology Of
    Challenging the Right, Advancing Social Justice CTRL-ALT-DELETE The origins and ideology of the Alternative Right 2017 JANUARY BY MATTHEW N. LYONS THE RIGHT’S MARRIAGEWWW.POLITICALRESEARCH.ORG MESSAGE <<< PAGE 1 >>> WWW.POLITICALRESEARCH.ORG This report is excerpted from Matthew N. Lyons’s forthcoming book, Insurgent Suprema- cists: The U.S. Far Right’s Challenge to State and Empire, to be published by PM Press and Kersplebedeb Publishing. MAYBE YOU FIRST HEARD ABOUT THEM in used internet memes effectively to gain visibili- the summer of 2015, when they promoted the ty, rally supporters, and target opponents. Most insult “cuckservative” to attack Trump’s op- Alt Rightists have rallied behind Trump’s presi- ponents in the Republican primaries.1 Maybe dential bid, yet as a rule Alt Rightists regard the it was in August 2016, when Hillary Clinton existing political system as hopeless and call for denounced them as “a fringe element” that had replacing the United States with one or more “effectively taken over the Republican party.”2 racially defined homelands. Or maybe it was a couple of weeks after Trump’s This report offers an overview of the Alt surprise defeat of Clinton, when a group of them Right’s history, beliefs, and relationship with were caught on camera giving the fascist salute other political forces. Part 1 traces the move- in response to a speaker shouting “Hail Trump, ment’s ideological origins in paleoconservatism hail our people, hail victory!”3 and the European New Right, and its devel- The Alt Right helped Donald Trump get elect- opment since Richard Spencer launched the ed president, and Trump’s campaign put the Alt original AlternativeRight.com website in 2010.
    [Show full text]
  • First Amended Complaint Is Submitted Pursuant to CPLR 3025(A)
    SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK COUNTY OF NEW YORK --------------------------------------------------------------------X Roy Den Hollander, Index No. 152656/2014 Plaintiff, FIRST AMENDED -against- VERIFIED COMPLAINT Tory Shepherd, Political Editor of The Advertiser- Sunday Mail Messenger; Jury Requested Advertiser Newspapers Pty Ltd., d/b/a The Advertiser- Sunday Mail Messenger; Amy McNeilage, Education Reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald; Fairfax Media Publications Pty Ltd., d/b/a The Sydney Morning Herald; Defendants. --------------------------------------------------------------------X This First Amended Complaint is submitted pursuant to CPLR 3025(a). Plaintiff by and through his attorney, Roy Den Hollander, complains of all the Defendants: Injurious Falsehoods, Tortious Interference with a Prospective Contractual Relation, and, in the alternative, Prima Facie tort. Plaintiff also complains of Defendant Tory Shepherd: Libel. Plaintiff requests that Tory Shepherd publicly retract her libelous statements listed in this First Amended Complaint. A clarification of terms is initially needed. Plaintiff in his writings, speeches and interviews uses the term “feminist” to mean a person, usually female but not necessarily so, who believes that an accident of nature, being born female, made her superior to men in all matters under the sun. One who believes men are guilty until they prove themselves innocent, and that females are innocent until proven guilty, but even then a guy is still blamed for what the female volitionally did. Another definition Plaintiff relies on is that used by “Women Against Feminism” that real-life feminism has come to mean the “vilification of men, support for female privilege, and a demeaning view of women as victims rather than free agents.” (Ex.
    [Show full text]