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Local residents show support for a Confederate soldier statue on the grounds of the City of Virginia Beach Municipal Center in Virginia during a rally calling for the statues removal on Aug. 24, 2017.Alex Wong/Getty Images This article is part of the Free Speech Project, a collaboration between Future Tense and the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law that examines the ways technology is influencing how we think about speech.

Earlier this month, a meme was shared in the Facebook group Save Southern Heritage that featured the portraits of two men: the Prophet Mohammed on the left and Robert E. Lee on the right, their chins tilting toward each other. [Mohammed] owned many slaves. Robert E. Lee was against slavery, the caption reads. So why are we tearing down statues instead of mosques? That post, which received 248 likes, is still up, despite the suggestion of real-world violence (and its use of Mohammeds image). But a comment, rambling about Arabs and Jews running this mess as a little joke, was removed within hours. Whether it was Facebooks algorithms, or content moderators, or one of the groups eight admins, a decision was made that one had to go while the other could stay. One slipped through the porous free speech filter; the other did not.

In the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, demands for Facebook to address hate speech have escalated, coinciding with a nationwide movement to remove Confederate statues and flags from cities, states, and institutions long imbued with Confederate symbolism. More than 1,100 companies and organizations have pulled ads from Facebook for at least the month of July as part of the #StopHateforProfit advertiser boycott. At the same time, Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia has ordered the removal of the statue of Lee that famously towers over Monument Avenue in Richmond, Mississippi decided to drop the cross of the Confederate battle flag from its state flag, and NASCAR banned the flag from its races.

These movements, intertwined and mutually reinforcing, pose a particular threat to those who consider themselves present-day Confederates. From their perspective, Facebook has become more essential than ever to amplifying their message at a critical moment in historyjust as Facebook has shown a new willingness to police their speech.

Facebook has recently deplatformed hundreds of groups that express overtly violent, white supremacist beliefs, such as those associated with the Boogaloo movement. But the platform has yet to settle on a consistent approach to a more difficultand more commonquestion: how far to go in policing groups that the platform doesnt consider hate groups, but that nonetheless often attract hateful content. This gray area contains hundreds, perhaps thousands, of neo-Confederate groups that are thriving on the platform. Individual posts containing hate speech are sometimes flagged and removed, but as a whole, these groups have so far remained relatively unscathed amid Facebooks heightened moderation, continuing to churn out thousands of posts a day in support of the Lost Cause. By insisting they promote heritage not hate, theyre able to skirt the boundaries of content moderation, even as their ideology rests on a reverence for the Confederacy and the antebellum South. Their complicated position on Facebook gets to the heart of the problems inherent to content moderation itself. It is a slow, often arbitrary process, driven not by clear understandings of what hate speech and hate groups are, but by haphazard flagging, a reliance on self-policing, and confusion over the kind of space Facebook or its critics want to create.

Since Facebook users exist in echo chambers, its easy to miss how widespread Confederate heritage communities are if your Facebook friends arent sympathetic to their cause. Many such groups, both public and private, have existed since the mid-2010s, but a spate of new groups appeared this summer. Some local varieties have just hundreds of members, while other national groups, such as Confederate Citizens, have nearly 100,000 members. Not only are these groups extensive, but they also serve as content factories. Groups such as In Defense of the Confederacy, Dixie Cotton Confederates, and Save Southern Heritage see hundreds of posts each day, which circulate rapidly around other groups, pages, and news feeds. At heart, these groups share some common features: the casting of Lee as a benevolent, misunderstood figure despite his documented defense of slavery in the U.S.; the efforts to preserve and build Confederate iconography; the indignation at the toppling of statues; and therhetorical?call to arms.

Many of these groups spend a lot of time thinking about hateful speech. Just take a look at their self-policing and content policies: Its not uncommon for a group to explicitly forbid hate speech, racist content, and bullying. Nor is it rare for moderators to post and repost these rules in a groups main discussion. Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University known for her work on extremist communities on Facebook, told me that this dynamic is particular to Confederate groups. A public-facing Facebook presence is important to the Confederate agenda of, for instance, getting the Lost Cause narrative in childrens textbooks. At the same time, they also attract this sort of hateful element, and so they know they need to clamp down on that or it will look bad, Squire said. I guess my question is always: If people didnt talk like that on your page, you probably wouldnt have to write that rule, right?

Moderators and group members are vigilant in part because theyre aware some of the content they attract (and many would like to espouse) wont fall within Facebooks policies. I fully respect the First Amendment. But the Wizard of Facebook doesnt. I dont want to get kicked off Facebook or have my growing page taken down because of racist words, posted a moderator of Confederate Defenders, a public group, a few years ago. That same moderator wrote earlier this month, with greater urgency, With all the censorship going around, I dont want to lose my page. PLEASE BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR LANGUAGE.

For many Confederates, that censorship is a worthwhile trade-off. If Im willing to self-censor myself and my organization, I can reach a reasonable number of people with my message and I can do it every day, Kirk Lyons, an admin of Save Southern Heritage, told me. He also runs the Facebook page for the Southern Legal Resource Center, an organization he co-founded that has been called the legal arm of the neo-Confederate movement. Lyons identifies as an unreconstructed Southerner, but the Southern Poverty Law Center considers him a white supremacist lawyer. (Lyons denies this and maintains that the SPLCs article on him contains many inaccuracies.) Lyons sees Facebook as a sort of necessary evil to getting his message out. Its worth putting up with all of Mark [Zuckerberg]s nonsense because its so much easier than it was in the email age or the letter and postage stamp age, he said. If hes careful, he explained, his individual posts can reach hundreds of thousands of people, such as a recent image of a Confederate flaghis Confederate flagflown over NASCARs race at Talladega.

How sincere the language opposing hate speech comes across varies from group to group, user to user, which is fitting for a movement known for its broad ideological spectrum. Some say that their beliefs are compatible with an outright rejection of racism or even disrespectful content; they may believe they can revere Dixie on their own terms, irrespective of the racial violence its rooted in. Along these lines, the least incendiaryand the most moderatedgroups tend to focus on Confederate soldiers and their descendants, as well as historical documents.

On the more extreme end of the spectrum, groups affiliated with the League of the South are known for openly discussing white supremacist beliefs. (For this reason, Facebook actually deplatforms them: A few weeks ago, for instance, Facebook took down one such group based in North Carolina, though a new group replaced it within a day.) Group discussions often bear out the disparities among Confederates approach to hate speech. In screenshots Squire sent me from a private Confederate monument protection group in her county, a number of members expressed anger at seeing a fellow Confederate hold up a sign at a rally on July 11 that read, NO FREE COLORED TVS TODAYpresumably a racist dog whistle. I dont care how you look at this, but to me this is racist period, said one user. People state over and over we are for history and heritage yet make signs like this. Some reiterated this isnt what they stand for, some didnt understand what the big fuss was about, and others were more focused on the signs potential to give fuel to detractors and the liberal media.

But that sort of pushback is dwarfed at times by the amount of hateful speech that persists. Group members often post about landing themselves in Facebook jail for a reason. Even in the public groups, its not unusual to see racial slurs, some of which arent later removed. Last month, for example, a member of Save Southern Heritage used the N-word to refer to people destroying and looting. Im impressed you werent banned for that word on FB, another member replied. I agree with every word though. More common than racial slurs, however, are calls to violencesometimes specific, sometimes more vague. In a group called Save the Confederacy and restore our Confederate heritage flags up, a post on a Black Lives Matter demonstration prompted a few users to say that drivers should run protesters over and take out as many as possible. In Dales Confederate Group, which is now private, a user commented this month that the best thing to do with Democratic cities is to bomb them.

All the examples mentioned here, aside from Squires, come from public groups. Private groups are strict about admittance: Virtually all require you to answer questions about your commitment to the Confederacy, your opinion on the real cause of the Civil War, and what the Confederate flag means to you upon your request to join. Given the content thats visible in public groups, its safe to assume that more borderline-to-outright-hateful speech thrives in these self-contained spaces. One of the eternal problems with Facebook is that if this stuff goes on in a private group, the only way to report the content is to join the group, find the content, and report it. Each report takes 10 clicks. Its putting a lot of work on a user, said Squire. And in private Confederacy groups, those users may not be inclined to do any of that work.

A recent civil rights audit of Facebook, carried out by independent civil rights experts and lawyers over the course of two years, criticized the platform for prioritizing free speech over nondiscrimination. The auditors concluded, among other things, that Facebook needs to be more proactive about identifying and removing extremist and white nationalist content. I dont know if Mark appreciates that hateful speech has harmful results, and that Facebook groups have real-world consequences, Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, told the New York Times after the civil rights report was released.

Those real-world consequences are worth considering. Before Facebook restricted public access to its application programming interface, or API, in 2018, Squire used Facebooks data to systematically study about 700,000 users across 2,000 hate groups and 10 different ideologies. Of these groups, the Confederates were the least likely to cross over with other ideologies: About 85 percent of them belonged only to Confederate groups. There are two stories here. The first is that Confederate groups are relatively contained and self-sustaining, and that their members dont dabble much in other, more violent ideologies. From that perspective, their threat consists mostly of the speech within their groups. The second story is about the other 15 percent of Confederates who cross over into militia, white nationalist, alt-right, and anti-immigrant groups. The prime example of the dangers of that crossover is the Unite the Right rally in 2017. Although the rally was ostensibly held to protect the Lee monument in Charlottesville, Virginia, it became a gathering for hate groups across the far-right, including neo-Nazis and Klansmen, that left at least 33 injured and one counterprotester dead.

Its not controversial to say that neo-Nazi or Boogaloo groups should go, but its less clear what a mainstream platform should do with heritage not hate groupsgroups that, as the SPLC puts it, in their effort to gloss over the legacy of slavery in the South strengthen the appeal of Lost Cause mythology, opening the door for violent incidents. Even the SPLC, which refers to neo-Confederacy as a whole as a revisionist branch of American white nationalism, doesnt consider a number of Confederate heritage groups, such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans, to be hate groups.

When I asked Squiresomeone whos outspoken about her activism and who provides data on far-right extremists to the SPLC and antifa activistswhether she believes Facebook should allow these groups to operate on its platform, she pointed to the fact that their speech isnt illegal. And more than that, she said, their beliefs are not fringe down here in the South. She mentioned that state representatives in her state of North Carolina have ties to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill gave $2.5 million last year to that organization after protesters toppled a statue of a Confederate soldier on campus in 2018. Were fighting it, obviously, but its a very long and uphill battle, Squire continued. And I think Facebook has to bridge both of those realities.

As people continue to call for more robust definitions of hate speech online, it may be helpful to remember that sometimes what we want from Facebook is misaligned with how the platform operates. Facebook can be dangerous not just for its content, but for its lack of public data; for how its (private) algorithms work; for the ways it amplifies certain voices and can lead to deeper polarization and, in some cases, radicalization. Theres a reason researchers are always going on about the dire need for transparency. Outside of calling for Facebook to police its most extreme content, its worth asking what we can reasonably expect from a private company that operates in its own interest.

Sometimes what we want from Facebook is misaligned with how the platformoperates.

After Facebook released the findings of the civil rights audit, the Verges Casey Newton succinctly summed up the problem in his newsletter: The company could implement all of the auditors suggestions and nearly every dilemma would still come down to the decision of one person overseeing the communications of 1.73 billion people each day. The same could be said of the majority of #StopHateforProfits 10 recommendations for Facebook, which demand changes such as further audits, a C-suite civil rights executive, and heightened content and group moderation. This campaign is not calling for Facebook to adopt a new business model, spin off its acquisitions, or end all algorithmic promotion of groups, wrote Newton. Nor is it calling for an overhaul of Facebooks approach to transparency. Yet these sorts of changes may in fact be necessary to addressing the root of Facebooks speech and radicalization problems.

The complexities of Confederate discourse on the platform ultimately show that singling out hate speech as the primary target of public outrage at Facebook is, in part, a distractiona Sisyphean endeavor that has a tendency to obscure more serious issues. Such a focus leaves us with the classic censorship vs. free speech dichotomy, which inevitably leads to some people demanding a return to the First Amendment, and others retorting that the Constitution doesnt pertain to private sites, ad infinitum. What borderline speech can force us to do is to move beyond the terms of that debate, to update the conversation (and call to action) to reflect the platform as it operates today.

But what a better conversationlet alone moderation frameworkwould actually look like is unclear. Newton writes that the best hope for addressing Facebooks role in accelerating and promoting hate speech, misinformation, and extremist views comes not from the campaign or the audit, but from Congress, which has the potential to question the companys underlying dynamics and staggering size. And thats certainly one avenue for change, especially with Zuckerberg testifying before the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee on Wednesday. But informed government regulation often relies on citizen engagement, and in the case of Facebooks speech problems, users must grapple not only with the flashiest and most extreme bits of Facebooks content, but also with the shades of speech that exist just below that, and the mechanisms that allow that speech to flourish.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

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Confederate Groups Are Thriving on Facebook. What Does That Mean for the Platform? - Slate

Every so often in Britain,eugenicsis accused of making a comeback. Recently, the Black Lives Matter movement has drawn attention to the harmful lasting impact of Britains colonialist figures, shocking those who assumed that white supremacy had been left firmly in the past.

But for those campaigning against the legacy ofeugenicsin higher education, these revelations about the roots of racism were not as surprising. From their perspective, eugenicist views never really disappearedthey had just found a safe havenin somepartsof British universities.

British universities have strong historical ties witheugenics. Sir Francis Galton, a prolific Victorian scientist known to be one of the pioneers ofeugenics, set up a lab at University College London in 1904 and endowed the institution with his personal collection of work, along with funding for the countrys first Chair ofEugenics(the post was renamed, in the sixties, to Professor of Human Genetics.) Until it was finally renamed after Black Lives Matter protests, students at UCL still attended lectureson bio-medical genetic issuesat the Galton Lecture theatre.

In 2018, it was revealed thatasecreteugenicsconference, the London Conference of Intelligence, had been held in a UCL lecture theatre.The event hosted white supremacist academics closely associated with the American alt-right, wrote the London Student.

A UCL internal report on the conference, since made public, show the conference had been attended by fringe academics to policy-interested individuals.In a press statement, UCL said The conferences were booked and paid for as an external event and without our officials being told of the details. They were therefore not approved or endorsed by UCL. The university reassured that they were committed to vigorously combatting racism and sexism in all forms, but also stated that they had a legal obligation to protect free speech on campus, within the law.

The scandal brought attention to UCLs history, and the university launched an inquiry into the history ofeugenicsat the institution. But just before the universitys report was publishedto the public, nine membersof the 16-strong inquiry team refused to sign it, and even argued that the inquiry did not go far enough in a separate set of recommendations. An anonymous member of the committee said: the big issue is not how a member of staff booked a room, but why someone with his views was a member of staff at all.

***

But its not just about one man, or one university.After the Second World War, academics from Cambridge, Oxford and Glasgow were also part of the EugenicsEducation Society, a popular 20thcentury group thatat timescampaigned for sterilisation and marriage restrictions.Universities still memorialise the legacies of famous scientists who made important discoveries but also expressed viewsthat have attracted controversy such asFrancis Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA, andRonald Fisher, a pioneer of modern day statistics.

The home ofeugenicshasnearlyalways been in universities, says David King, director of an independent watchdog organisation Human Genetics Alert. Someacademics tend to believe that all knowledge is good, even if eugenic ideas influence the research, he says:universities are a protected space for these kind of views. Political power has always operated in Britain this way, quietly and below the democratic radar, through conversations between privileged elites, often academics.

However, others disagree. Steve Jones, who was head of UCLs genetics department and former president of the Galton Institute, says that the historical ties these institutions have witheugenicsare discussed openly and extensively. In some ways, the horrors of theeugenicsmovement are what has made biologists cautious about what they are willing to do today says Jones. In the old days those involved knew almost nothing, and were willing to do almost anything; while today we know far more but are much less confident about how we use that information.

Jones argues that there is a crucial difference betweentheperspectives of medical researchers now, compared to those in the era of Galton. Eugenicists set out to change the fate of future generations, whatever the cruelties that might be visited on the people of the day. In contrast, modern genetics tries, although it sometimes fails, to improve the prospects of those alive today Jones says.

But if genetics today hasonly tenuous links toeugenics, why are people worried? A subsection ofresearch, which looks for genetic explanations for complex traits such as intelligence, mental health or personality, has recently gained traction. This field, called sociogenomics,could pave the wayfor a new era of genetic engineering and social stigma. Since the 1960s, dubious journals such asMankind Quarterlyhave been the homes of articles that appear togive backing toscientific racism, classism and ableism.

But now even more respected institutions are dabbling in it. Work linking a persons genetic code to their intelligence, income and educational attainment has been produced by researchers across UK universities, includingKings College London,University of Edinburgh, andGoldsmiths. These studies,one of whichlinks 7-year old childrens test scores with their DNA, would arguably not be out of place at the London Conference of Intelligence. Even the most prestigious academic journals, such asNature Communications, have published studies linking income with genetics. These studies have been cited in reports inMankind Quarterlyto support arguments that Muslimimmigrants have lower IQs than white western Europeans.

Authors from these studies say resultscould helpminimize social disparities in health and well-being, or they could lead toevidence-based, biologically-informededucation policy. But how can linking genes with how much you earn lead tolessinequality? And how would finding tiny unchangeable differences in the DNA of schoolchildren lead to better educational for all, when the biggest drivers of educational achievement are factors like having a safe home, and a comfortableupbringing?

***

The global rise of alt-right populism is to blame for the resurgence ineugenicsresearch, says Professor David Colquhoun, who has worked at UCL for over 40 years. The alt-right give credence to eugenic ideas, and use pseudoscientific genetic theories to support them, he explains. This is documented in scientist Angelina Sainis bookSuperior: The Return of Race Science, where she describes how racists insistently search for biological evidence that they are more special than everyone else. If skin colour cant explain racial inequality, then maybe the structure of our bodies and brains will. If not anatomy, then genes. When this one, too, throws up nothing of value, theyll move onto the next thing, she writes.

Ben van der Merwe is the investigative journalist whodrew attention tothe London Conference of Intelligence at UCL. He believes that universities have beentoo willing to provide a home for these people too. You have a minority of people who are basically cranks, and these individuals (qualified scientists and amateur bloggers) have managed to position themselves as part of the current moral panic over free speech on campus he says. Universities dont appreciate thateugenicsis not a culture war issue over the right to offend.

Universities are further heavily incentivised to hide their history ofeugenics, because many profit from legacy funding from these figures, says a UCL SU Disabled Students Officer, who prefers to remain anonymous. The legacy ofeugenicsseems to pervade inuniversity policies today, which are hostile to students with disabilities and other marginalised groups, they say. Black alumni at UCL have spoken about feeling they were forced out [of the university], and I have no doubt this happens to other groups historically targeted byeugenics. Universities in this country were built from the work of people with many harmful attitudes, says the SU Officer. Students are blocked from finding out about their institutions histories by a lack of accessible information, and an attitude that everything has been fixed now. But it hasnt.

Profit motives and prejudiced policy are not the only factors leading to a culture where eugenicsresearchseems to thrive.Criticising UCLs handling of theeugenicsinquiry, Joe Cain, professor of history of science at UCL,wrote: Excessive deference to managers is one factor. Excessive amounts of discretionary money is another. Crafty people who know how to work the system is a third. Complacent, homogenous, and soft oversight is a fourth.

What should universities do next?UCL have taken important steps, including considering new names for their buildings named after eugenicists, and plan to fund new scholarships to study racism.

David King, who says he has experienced threats and intimidation for speaking up, believes a more extreme approach is needed, in UCL and other centres. He wants places like the Galton Institute to be shut down, and funding for research into genes and intelligence to be removed.

Big science projects cost a lot of money and do not take place unless they are funded King says. There is never enough money to fund all the research that scientists want to do. Science gets stopped every day. So the real question is which science do we want? And who gets to control it?

The rest is here:
The secret history of Britain's universities and eugenics - Prospect

Bill Maher, the longtime political satirist and host of HBOs Real Time, harbors an Ahab-like obsession with cancel culturethe theory that prominent politically incorrect (to borrow his catchphrase) folks are being pushed out of their jobs by bad-faith online mobs.

This likely stems from the time when, six days after the 9/11 attacks, Maher eventually had his show Politically Incorrect canceled by Sinclair after calling the terrorists involved not cowardly for staying in the airplane when it hits the building, a statement that had come on the heels of Maher comparing his dogs to retarded children. In a matter of months, however, he was given a brand-new show by HBO, which hes hosted for the last 17 years.

And, like many of the rich, privileged, highly influential signatories of Harpers infamous cancel culture letterfrom Malcolm Gladwell and Fareed Zakaria, who have committed multiples acts of plagiarism yet have not seen their opportunities slip, to J.K. Rowling, an anti-trans billionaire and bestselling authorMaher is a living example that cancel culture is overblown.

On his HBO show, Maher has said the N-word; regularly defended powerful men accused of sexual harassment; yukked it up with the alt-right; made discriminatory statements against Muslims; pushed anti-vaxx nonsense; and suggested that everyone should want to get COVID-19. He has yet to be so much as censured by HBO (at least publicly) for his behavior.

And so, on Friday night, Maher welcomed Bari Weiss and Thomas Chatterton Williams, the two people who have dined out the most on the Harpers letter, to discuss cancel culture.

As a guy who did a show called Politically Incorrect and another called Real Time, thank you, because we need a pushback on cancel culture, said Maher, adding, What strikes me about it is the pushback is coming from liberals, and almost anyone who signed this letter is a liberal! (The bulk of the letters signatories are more libertarian than liberal.)

Chatterton Williams, who was not able to provide a single solid example of someone whos been truly canceled during a recent interview with The New Yorkers Isaac Chotiner, spoke of the overall climate of censoriousness and applauded the letters international coverage; meanwhile, Weiss referred to it as a warning cry from inside these institutions, this growing culture of illiberalism, which is different from criticism. She added, It is about punishmentit is about taking away their job.

Lets unpack this a bit. Chatterton Williams is a prominent author and writer who has for some reason penned two memoirs before the age of 40 and contributes to The New York Times Magazine. Weiss recently wrote a book and was an opinion writer at The New York Times. These people have massive platforms. Furthermore, Weiss recent resignation from The New York Times, which shes painted as her being canceled by a major institution, was by all accounts a coordinated PR effort conducted by Weiss and the writer Andrew Sullivan who had been plotting to launch a new venture for people who presumably wont criticize them as much.

Weiss went on to draw a false equivalence between those on the right who worship Trump as a deity who can do nothing wrong and those on the left where to be anything less than defund the police or abolish the police makes you a hereticthe latter of course not even being true, since the majority of those on the left, including Democratic nominee Joe Biden, dont support defunding or abolishing the police. Im also not sure how the blind worship of a fascistic ruler is on the same level as believing in defund the police, or to support the reallocation of some police funds elsewhere, though it sounds like Weiss does not understand that defund the police does not actually mean taking away all the polices money.

Im not sure how the blind worship of a fascistic ruler is somehow on the same level as believing in defund the police, or to support the reallocation of some police funds elsewhere.

Maher agreed wholeheartedly with Weiss (whom he called hip) and Chatterton Williams, opining, For those who think that this is just, again, celebrities whining or elites or something, there was a survey recently and 62 percent of peoplesay theyre afraid to share what they truly believe.

Heres the thing: this letter was mostly celebrities whining. And that study Maher cited was conducted by the Cato Institutea right-wing organization founded by Charles Koch.

The reality is that speech has never been more Democratic, and platforms like Twitter, that the Weiss and Chatterton Williams of the world decry as unfair, have given voice to countless underrepresented groups, from Black Lives Matter to the Arab Spring. Sure, there are some cancellations happening in media and academia but they arent of these politically incorrect writers with gigantic platforms who are paid large sums of money to share their politically incorrect opinions and at no risk of cancellation. Theyre of people like Norman Finkelstein, who was driven out of academia and denied tenure for criticizing Israelthe very same crime that drove Weiss to campaign to get Arab professors fired during her college heyday.

Plus, with all the real problems going on in the world150,000-plus dead from the novel coronavirus, unidentified federal agents kidnapping protesters on the streets, police brutality against Black bodies, Trump threatening to postpone the electionwhy is Maher dedicating the majority of his program to this crap?

Originally posted here:
Bill Maher, Who Said the N-Word on TV, Decries 'Cancel Culture' - The Daily Beast

The irony of a mens rights activist murdering two men to get back at feminists goes to show, no one is safe from violent misogyny, writes Baker. Toxic masculinity kills. (Mathias Wasik/ Flickr)

On Sunday afternoon, July 19, a white, anti-feminist mens rights activist and lawyer Roy Den Hollander dressed up in a FedEx uniform and went to the house of New Jersey federal judge Esther Salasthe first Latina appointed to be a federal judge in New Jersey. Judge Salas had presided over a case brought by Hollander, challenging the U.S. governments male-only military draft registration requirement.

When the door opened, Hollander shot Judge Salass 20-year-old son dead and seriously wounded her husband, then fled. Judge Salas was in the basement at the time.

Hollander was later found dead about two hours north of Judge Salass home in an apparent suicide.

The 72-year-old Ivy League-educated, former New York corporate lawyer had been a member of the San Diego-based mens rights organizationthe National Coalition for Men. He had for years filed lawsuits alleging gender discrimination against men. He challenged the constitutionality of ladies night promotions at bars and nightclubs, sued Columbia University for its womens studies classes, and sued news organizations over what he said was biased coverage against Trump during the 2016 election.

In 2008, he filed a suit against the federal government, alleging the Violence Against Women Act was unconstitutionally biased against men.

Hollander reportedly carried around a typed, 41-point list headed Discrimination against men in America. He complained feminists had infiltrated institutions, and theres been a transfer of rights from guys to girls.

In a 2018 ruling, Judge Salas allowed Hollanders case to go forward, but he criticized her for not moving the case along quickly enough. He called her a lazy and incompetent Latina judge appointed by Obama.

This man seems to have been especially unbalanced, but the incident nonetheless offers a tragic illustration of how violence lurks very close to the surface for some of these men, pro-feminist scholar and educator Jackson Katz told Ms.

It is directly related to how violence is used by abusive men in heterosexual relationships with women. It is a very effective means of gaining compliance: If I cant get my way by any other means, Im going to get it through the threat of violence or the actual enactment of violence.

Here atMs., our team is continuing to report throughthis global health crisisdoing what we can to keep you informed andup-to-date on some of the most underreported issues of thispandemic.Weask that you consider supporting our work to bring you substantive, uniquereportingwe cant do it without you. Support our independent reporting and truth-telling for as little as $5 per month.

Hollander follows in a long line of anti-feminist men who commit murder, such as Marc Lpine and Elliot Rodger. In his 1989 Montreal massacre, Lpine shot 30 rounds of ammunition into a group of female students at an engineering school in Montreal, while yelling, Youre all feminists!

In 2014, Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured 14 others in Isla Vista, Calif., after distributing a 141-page document describing his deep-rooted loathing of women. Like Hollander, Lpine and Rodger both killed themselves after murdering others.

And just as mass shooters often have histories of domestic violence, so did Hollander. His former wife accused him of abuse and harassment, including revenge porn. In 2001, she filed a New York domestic incident report, alleging that he violated a protective order by stealing her diary and posting it on the internet along with nude photos. He stalked her and doxxed her for years.

Hollander, who was a Trump supporter and volunteer, posted a 2,028-page collection of writings on his website containing deeply misogynist and racist rants about women, whom he called feminazis. He characterized feminists as an evil that wants to exercise totalitarian power over men. He said men have a right to revolt against that tyranny, to take it down. He also threatened that Feminists should be careful in their meddling with nature. There are 300 million firearms in this country, and most of them are owned by guys.

Just as Lpine left a list of nineteen names of radical feminists he would have killed but for lack of time, police found in Hollanders car the names of other female judges he may have planned to target, including New York States chief judge Janet M. DiFiore.

Hollander was part of the anti-feminist mens rights movement, which advocates for a male supremacist ideology the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes as a thinly veiled desire for the domination of women and a conviction that the current system oppresses men in favor of women.

A Voice for Men is the largest and most influential mens rights organization. Hollander published on their website. But the movement has many branches, including:

The 60,000-plus member online community called the Red Pill uses a metaphor from The Matrix to refer to the moment one comes to believe that men are oppressed. Most mens rights activists are white, middle-class, heterosexual men.

While there is often hostility among the different subgroups, SPLC reports the unifying thread is virulent, at times violent misogyny, and the practice of blaming women and a large feminist conspiracy for the ills of (mostly white) men today.

Male supremacist ideology is driven by the belief that men are entitled to a superior place in society than women, which are biologically and intellectually inferioras a result, any advancement that women might have obtained is nothing more than a usurpation. Like white supremacy, male supremacy is driven by fear and anger at the loss of white male status.

This misogyny is often interlaced with implicit or explicit threats of violence.

Violence is a critical part of that ideology, says Katz. If I cant get what I want through persuasion, I will use violence, or the implicit threat of violence of it. Even if a man doesnt use violence, the threat of violence hangs in the air as the ultimate way to get what he wants.

Many mens rights activists have an aggrieved entitlement that they use to justify misogyny and violence, says sociologist Michael Kimmel, author of Angry White Men: If you feel entitled and you have not gotten what you expected, that is a recipe for humiliation.

When they see women around them who have succeeded when they havent, they blame women for their failures, feel aggrieved, and use violence, or the threat of violence, to get back at them.

If you grow up with the expectation that the world should be organized in your favor, says Katz, and theres a deep cultural belief in a natural hierarchy with white men residing at the top of that hierarchy, and youre growing up from the earliest moments of your life being taught that, and then seeing it slip away, then theres a real feeling that something is being taken away. Even though objectively they didnt deserve it in the first place, thats not their lived experiencethats not their subjective emotional experience.

Anti-feminist mens rights activists often attack efforts to address violence against women, as Hollander did in his lawsuit challenging the Violence Against Womens Act, inaccurately contending that women engage in intimate partner violence against men as often or more than men do against women.

In her book Equality with a Vengeance: Mens Rights Groups, Battered Women, and Antifeminist Backlash, scholar Molly Dragiewicz argues antifeminist mens groups use the language of gender neutrality to attack programs created to ameliorate the outcomes of gendered inequality. These discourses proclaiming sex symmetry in violence against intimates serve to reproduce the conditions that enable violence by silencing those most adversely affected, obscuring structural contributing factors, and echoing abusers.

According to SPLC, the most established proponents are the virulently misogynistic website A Voice for Men, started by Paul Elam (male spelled backwards), and the Return of Kings, founded by pick-up artist Roosh V. The SPLC designates both as hate groups and describes male supremacist ideology as the gateway drug for the racist alt-right.

Australian scholar Michael Flood maintains a comprehensive website of scholarship about mens rights movement, including resources on the links between anti-feminist mens rights activists and the alt-right.

Hollander, who was 72 and had a fatal cancer diagnosis, may have felt he had nothing to lose. In addition to the murder of Judge Salass son, Hollander is also the top suspect in the murder of a rival mens rights activistlawyer Marc Angelucci, the vice president of the group National Coalition for Men. On July 11, a man posing as a FedEx delivery person shot Angelucci to death at his home in California. Investigators suspect that Hollander may have been jealous of Angelucci, who won a military draft case before Hollander could win his case before Judge Salas.

Mens rights activists are now trying to distance themselves from Hollander, claiming he is not one of them. But his long-term involvement in their movement, past membership in one of their leading organizations, and use of their ideology and rhetoric proves them wrong.

The irony of a mens rights activist murdering two men to get back at feminists goes to show, no one is safe from violent misogyny. Toxic masculinity kills. Male supremacist ideology and behavior, which often intersects with white supremacy as in the case of Hollanders racist misogyny toward Judge Salas, have been tolerated for far too long in American society.

Whether in the streets or in our homes, in front of womens reproductive health clinics or in the halls of government, whether online or in person, we must finally start taking misogyny seriously, in word and in deed.

The coronavirus pandemic and the response by federal, state and local authorities is fast-moving.During this time,Ms. is keeping a focus on aspects of the crisisespecially as it impacts women and their familiesoften not reported by mainstream media.If you found this article helpful,please consider supporting our independent reporting and truth-telling for as little as $5 per month.

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Misogyny, Murder and the Men's Rights Movement - Ms. Magazine

Federal officers walk through tear gas while dispersing a crowd of about a thousand people during a protest in Portland, Ore. (Nathan Howard / Getty Images)

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A major American city has been taken over by violent anarchists, according to the Trump administration and right-wing news. Portland, Ore., is a city under siege, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, said last week. On Thursday, Wolf visited Portland to see for himself the lawless destruction, which is allegedly so dire as to warrant the deployment of federal forces, who have spent the last few weeks teargassing, beating, and temporarily kidnapping protesters. Fox Newss Sean Hannity decried constant chaos; Tucker Carlson claimed the whole city had been destroyed by the mob.Ad Policy

This would be alarming stuff, if it were true. Portland, where I live, has been the site of ongoing protests against police brutality and racism since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a 54-day stretch of activism as of this writing. Over the past two months, mostly peaceful demonstrators have filled bridges, parks, and Interstate 84, sometimes numbering in the thousands. In what is now a predictable pattern, each night a group converges near the Justice Center and Federal Courthouse downtown. Usually small provocationstossed water bottles or fireworks or a Granny Smith apple with a bite out of itspark a wave of violence from law enforcement. Occasionally, there have been more overt acts of vandalism, particularly in the immediate wake of Floyds death, including broken windows and small fires. (For more detailed timelines of the protests in Portland from local reporters, read this and this.)

But the city is hardly wracked by chaos. Outside of the few square blocks downtown that are marked by graffiti, boarded-up windows, and metal fencing, things feel normalor rather, as normal as possible given the impact of Covid-19, which has had a far more disruptive effect than have the protests. The bulk of the violence cited by Wolf amounted to graffiti and other property damage. Meanwhile, his agents and other federal officers have seriously injured a number of protesters, including a Navy veteran who had his hand broken by federal officers after he tried talking to them. The mood in the crowd downtown is often jovialat least until law enforcement arriveswith people dancing and chanting and giving out vegan stew, barbecue, and donated bike helmets. On Friday night around 10:30 pm, shortly after federal forces started spraying tear gas, filling a city block with noxious fumes, a few families were strolling by shuttered storefronts just a few blocks away, apparently unaffected by the siege.

Federal agents showed up in Portland in early July, after Trump signed an executive order protecting statues and monuments from criminal violence during racial justice protests. In response, the Department of Homeland Security created a task force to surge resources. Ostensibly, federal forces are in Portland to protect federal property, including the courthouse. But their primary effect has been to escalate violence. On July 11, a deputy with a tactical unit of the US Marshals Service shot a demonstrator named Donavan LaBella in the head with an impact munition, fracturing his skull. On July 16, reporters for Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that federal agents were grabbing people on the street and pulling them into unmarked cars.

I am basically tossed into the van. And I had my beanie pulled over my face so I couldnt see and they held my hands over my head, Mark Pettibone, one of the people detained, told OPB. While Pettibone had been at the demonstration that night, he was on his way home when he was whisked away. I just happened to be wearing black on a sidewalk in downtown Portland at the time. As The Nations Ken Klippenstein reported, the agency responsible for Pettibones detention was the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC), a SWAT team-style unit officially charged with responding to terrorist threats.

A number of lawsuits have been filed against the federal government for civil rights violations, and protests that had dwindled to a hundred people or so are now drawing thousands to downtown. Things had been in fact kind of winding downuntil the federal police force or whatever it is, Im still not quite sure, came in and literally blew things up, said Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran, who joined the demonstrations over the weekend and on Tuesday night. Theyre responding with this horrific amount of force that is causing so much trauma and injury to what had been relatively minor acts of, at the very worst, vandalism of property.

How did a city of 653,000 become the testing ground for what Trump has suggested will be broader interference in US citiespart of an election-year strategy to stoke fear and advance an authoritarian vision of law and order? The groundwork for federal intervention in Portland was laid long before this summers protests by right-wing groups and media, which turned the city into a bogeyman. While Oregon has a legacy of state-sanctioned racism and is still home to a disproportionately large number of hate groups, Portland has also long been the site of antifascist organizing and other left protest movements. (Demonstrations in Portland against George H.W. Bush between 1989 and 1991 were so notorious that a member of the administration dubbed the city Little Beirut.) Extreme groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer have repeatedly targeted the city over the past few years, holding rallies that inevitably drew counterprotests and created media spectacles.Current Issue

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Demonstrations in Portland immediately following Trumps election in 2016 were huge and, at times, explosive, with police deploying tear gas, flash grenades, and rubber bullets in response. The following year, days after a white supremacist stabbed and killed two people on Portlands light rail, the alt-right group Patriot Prayer held a Trump Free Speech Rally rally; police responded to by detaining hundreds of counterdemonstrators. Similar incidents occurred throughout 2017 and repeatedly in the years since, and conservative media eagerly latched onto a narrative of Portland as lawless anarchist enclave. National Review, for instance, devoted a cover in 2018 to a story by Kevin Williamson in which he described anti-fascist goons and thugs as being in effective control of Portland. In July 2019, clashes between the alt-right and counterdemonstrators drew attention from Trump (Portland is being watched very closely Hopefully the Mayor will be able to properly do his job, he tweeted) and prompted Texas Senator Ted Cruz to call for federal prosecutiona premonition of what was to come.

Portlands drawn the fascination and ire of a lot of right-wing media personalities, fascist groups, neo-Nazi groups, and of course the president, said attorney Juan Chavez, who directs the civil rights project at the Oregon Justice Resource Center and is involved in litigation against the city of Portland regarding treatment of protesters. Were a big enough city to matter but small enough to be a laboratory for a lot of these tactics. And exacerbating this is the way our city government has portrayed protesters in the past, and the way Portland police have portrayed protesters in the past and currently.

City leaders have been sharply critical of the federal response, and have demanded that the Trump administration remove its officers. But Chavez and some activists say that the initial response to citywide protests by local politicians and police helped grease the skids for federal intervention. For weeks, Mayor Ted Wheeler, also serving as police commissioner, did little to restrict the polices use of tear gas and impact munitions against protesters and journalists beyond issuing statements of concern and loose directives with unclear enforcement mechanisms. (A temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge and a new state law restricting tear gas use did eventually put pressure on the bureau to justify its uses of force.) Now, Portland police appear to be coordinating with federal officers to disperse crowds downtown. Portland Police Association President Daryl Turner met with Wolf during his visit to Portland, and in a press conference over the weekend parroted the claim that the city is under siege by rioters.

Basically, you had thousands of people hitting the streets and getting met with tear gas, impact munitions, and harsh police tactics, and that really set the tone for where we were going, said Chavez. I think the city didnt grasp what they were dealing with. There was an immediate political response, that while it came quickly it wasnt adequate. And because of that, basically people did not feel like they had adequate civic feedback on their demands.Related Article

While the city implemented some reforms this yearremoving police from public schools, disbanding the controversial Gun Violence Reduction Team, and reallocating $15 million from the bureaus budgetmany activists wanted a deeper transformation. They ignored us, they did not center victims or protesters, they did nothing to de-escalate, they did nothing to engage, said Teressa Raiford, the founder and executive director of Dont Shoot PDX, which has been organizing for police reform in Portland for years and in June filed a class-action lawsuit against the city for indiscriminate use of tear gas. That is why Donald Trump took advantage of the situation. He knows exactly whats happening here in Oregon. Its a shame. Its disgusting.

Despite the public attention to the demonstrations and apparent public support for the Black Lives Matter movement, Raiford said that immediate safety issues for Black residents are still going unaddressed. On July 10, for instance, an 18-year-old named Shai-India Harris was shot and killed while walking down the street in southeast Portland. Police have not arrested anyone in her case.

Its not clear how all of this will end. Appearing on Fox News on Monday, Wolf said that the DHS was not going to back down. Neither are the protesters. The entire community, the entire city is on our sideeverybody from nurses to teachers to children to parents to families that have lost their loved ones, great grandmas, Raiford said. The most immediate questions concern the extent to which the violence will escalate. Longer term, Chavez wonders about the legal endgame. Can and will the federal courts allow this type of federal invasion of a state? In a lot of ways I think were in uncharted constitutional territory, he said. Even if the courts do act, it may not be fast enough to protect the people who will be out in the streets again tonight.

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Why Portland Became the Test Case for Trumps Secret Police - The Nation