I am concerned. Worried, even. This whole thread feels like a group of people who want to take one more step towards the concept of thought crime.
I’d have thought doublethink, at least, would be able to appreciate that problem…
You appear to have failed to notice I didn’t agree that domestic violence should be labelled terrorism, nor do I think the concept of politically motivated crime having a special category (as it currently does) is a good idea.
What I would like to see, is the information we already have about how violence is formented being used effectively by law enforcement. I am not convinced that imprisoning folk is always the answer - but intervening in effective ways would be helpful.
We have many laws that already cover these precursors, but they are not well used.
It might be reasonable, for example, that threats to kill on social media are considered sufficient reason to withdraw or refuse a gun license.
It is not at this time, default, that someone under active investigation for downloading images of illegal sexual abuse to have bail restrictions on their use of the internet. Why not ?
It is not at this time, default, for someone under active investigation for rape to be automatically subject to a restraining order keeping them away from the alleged victim. Why not ?
People *convicted* of abusing their partners are allowed to drag them through family courts for years trying to get access to their children. Why ?
(I realise not all victims/survivors in these situations are female, and if anything male victims of domestic violence are even less well served.)
You appear to have failed to notice I didn’t agree that domestic violence should be labelled terrorism, nor do I think the concept of politically motivated crime having a special category (as it currently does) is a good idea.
I disagree. Treason still seems like a useful legal category to have.
You appear to have failed to notice I didn’t agree that domestic violence should be labelled terrorism, nor do I think the concept of politically motivated crime having a special category (as it currently does) is a good idea.
I disagree. Treason still seems like a useful legal category to have.
You appear to have failed to notice I didn’t agree that domestic violence should be labelled terrorism, nor do I think the concept of politically motivated crime having a special category (as it currently does) is a good idea.
I disagree. Treason still seems like a useful legal category to have.
Why ?
Because attempting to overthrow the government is a serious offense that doesn't necessarily track with other crimes. Even though it involved burglary, Watergate was not about burglary.
.bunch of dumb kids using a website to vent their frustration at not being able to get a date
Easy to say and to minimise for those who are not the target.
I can find you some websites where I and others like me are the target for similar treatment if you like. There are extreme socialist forums that think people like me should be shot and our families (if any survive) charged for the bullet. I don’t think they should be criminalised or treated as terrorists either, unless they actually try to do something about it.
The modern kind of radicalisation that happens online increases the threat to a point where it needs the same attention and state resources deployed as other sorts of terrorism.
Seems like a dangerous thing to me. Today it’s the incel groups that post about how much they hate women.
And how great violent attacks against women are. And how awesome the men who commit those attacks are. In any other context websites that praise "martyrs" for carrying out violent attacks against hated groups are usually seen as inviting at least a little bit of scrutiny from authorities or the press. When the targets are women, on the other hand . . . ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’d bet real money, right now, that if somebody put a knife into Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees Mogg then within a few days there would be at least four or five posts on this very website about how happy the poster is about it and what a service to the country the attacker had done. There are posts right now wishing them ill. Oh, all couched in “I don’t condone violence, but…” or similar, of course, but then news outlets never quote that part.
Look, the men on those websites are almost certainly not very nice people. Hell, there’s a reason they can’t get a date in the first place. But if less than 95% of what’s posted to them is just teen frustration being vented without any serious intent - or even thought - behind it then I’ll be amazed.
I’d bet real money, right now, that if somebody put a knife into Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees Mogg then within a few days there would be at least four or five posts on this very website about how happy the poster is about it and what a service to the country the attacker had done.
If someone were to publicly post about their intention to assassinate the American president I would not be surprised if they received a visit from the Secret Service and/or FBI. I guess that's just one of those Pond differences. I also wouldn't be surprised if their known associates received similar visits.
Look, the men on those websites are almost certainly not very nice people. Hell, there’s a reason they can’t get a date in the first place. But if less than 95% of what’s posted to them is just teen frustration being vented without any serious intent - or even thought - behind it then I’ll be amazed.
Is that 95% figure a product of anything other than your own wishful thinking? This kind of 'boys will be boys' excuse when it comes to advocating violence against women or in favor of second-class citizenship for women is perhaps a contributing factor to why such positions propagate. I see no more problem with an increased level of scrutiny of various MRA forums than I do with increased scrutiny of white supremacist groups. Both have a well-documented history of vomiting up violent actors (#NotAllNeoNazis).
I don't think you understand how tightly knit the links are between incels, Gamergate, and the alt-right. Steve Bannon literally chose to recruit from gaming sites like Twitch and gaming subreddits (individual forums within Reddit - it should be noted that it's very easy to use Reddit in such a way that you would never come across the misogynistic or violent parts). Memes and online 'aesthetic' visual media like fashwave are still Nazi recruitment tactics, and also the promotion of tradfem content for conservative young women who are often white supremacists too. There are strong links to Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, anti-Semitism etc, as well as misogyny. That is not to downplay the misogyny involved here, but merely to point out that these issues are *related*. There is also inevitably a big Christian following of these people, especially trad or at least conservative RCs. Pro-monarchy white young RC men are constantly popping up in these spaces - on twitter, by their Vatican flags shall ye know them.
@Marvin the Martian I'm curious - what do you mean by '[people] like me'? Do you mean a marginalised group, or white men, or what? Regarding attacks on key members of the government, it's disingenuous to compare such imagined attacks to the terrorist attacks that already have happened by young white men involved in the Manosphere who - and I think this is key - openly claim to be copying other 'martyrs' for the cause. There is also the issue that women as a class are marginalised by men; current UK equality legislation does not identify misogyny specifically as a form of discrimination, but sex discrimination that can be claimed by any gender (for the record, UK law only recognises two sexes/genders - but somewhat confusingly does not differentiate between sex and gender, and uses the terms interchangeably). That is the big problem here.
@Marvin the Martian - I would like some of this thinking and the groups promulgating it to be thought terrorism, if they are then linked to terrorist actions, and this paper from April 2021 (link - pdf) definitely linked the more radical and recent manosphere groups to terrorism. That paper triggered the closing of a number of subreddits, which are now quarantined or closed, including the Red Pill, MGTOW and MGTOW2, of the ones of which I'm aware. This is also covered in this Newsweek story from earlier this year.
Without linking into quarantined subReddits or onto the manosphere itself, it's difficult to give you a flavour of quite what this stuff is like, but it's scary.
And no, I haven't said that I think terrorists should be locked up either, as I'm not convinced by the efficacy of prisons, and can probably find articles demonstrating how many people are radicalised in prison. But they certainly shouldn't be handed back guns after an anger management course.
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@Crœsos That delightful website informs me that some significant fraction of the so-called "incel" community apparently believes that vast numbers of women aren't having sex with them because they're too busy having sex with their dogs. These people are more delusional than a bunch of flat earthers.
There is also the issue that women as a class are marginalised by men; current UK equality legislation does not identify misogyny specifically as a form of discrimination, but sex discrimination that can be claimed by any gender (for the record, UK law only recognises two sexes/genders - but somewhat confusingly does not differentiate between sex and gender, and uses the terms interchangeably). That is the big problem here.
AIUI, UK law takes an expansive reading of sex and gender in discrimination law, so it doesn't matter whether you think you're discriminating on grounds of sex or gender or some combination - it's just as much illegal discrimination.
Curious why you think misogyny specifically should be called out in the statute. The laws on racial discrimination all talk about "discrimination on grounds of race" - not about specific racial groups that face widespread discrimination.
Also, I was literally about to post about the difference between 'redpilling' and 'blackpilling' when I see that the perpetrator in this case actually did refer to himself as blackpilled (look up 'Vice blackpilled' and the Vice article is the first result).
A quick primer - the term 'redpilled' comes from the film series The Matrix, where the protagonist Neo can choose to take either a blue pill or a red pill. The blue pill allows him to carry on in his current reality; the red pill allows him to see that his current 'reality' is just a simulation. The term 'redpilled' quickly became associated online (via 4chan) with incels and the far-right (who inevitably were the same group) - it's a way of showing that you have now opened your eyes to the 'true reality' of the world. Predictably this starts of with classic anti-Semitic tropes about (((globalists))) ('bankers', 'Soros', 'the Elite' etc are also common anti-Semitic dogwhistles used in this context). Note the striking similarity to QAnon language. That's not an accident. As an aside, such redpilled types tend to be violently transphobic especially to trans women, which is funny because the Matrix movies are made by trans women and the red pill refers to the estrogen tablets trans women take as part of hormone treatment (when the films were written/made, the main brand came as red pills). The similarity between the blue pill and a certain very famous Blue Pill of the 90s is also striking.
'Blackpilling' is the nihilistic next step. Whereas redpilled types wanted to improve their lot via things like pick up artist tactics and arguing with feminists online, blackpilled types believe that the world that rightly belongs to them - white cishet Christian/Western men - has been stolen from them and is now hopelessly under the control of TPTB, the Other, the Wokerati, the SJWs. The only way they can take it back is by force.
@Leorning Cniht - totally delusional - but radicalising others to the same ways of thinking - by setting up groups almost like terrorist cells through the internet, and feeling more and more driven into a corner as more and more social media outlets ban them (YouTube, Reddit, 4chan were all named on the board I've just checked).
Any discussion we've had about the people who ran to join Daesh showed how delusional they were about what the group stood for, but they'd been radicalised online.
@Crœsos That delightful website informs me that some significant fraction of the so-called "incel" community apparently believes that vast numbers of women aren't having sex with them because they're too busy having sex with their dogs. These people are more delusional than a bunch of flat earthers.
There is also the issue that women as a class are marginalised by men; current UK equality legislation does not identify misogyny specifically as a form of discrimination, but sex discrimination that can be claimed by any gender (for the record, UK law only recognises two sexes/genders - but somewhat confusingly does not differentiate between sex and gender, and uses the terms interchangeably). That is the big problem here.
AIUI, UK law takes an expansive reading of sex and gender in discrimination law, so it doesn't matter whether you think you're discriminating on grounds of sex or gender or some combination - it's just as much illegal discrimination.
Curious why you think misogyny specifically should be called out in the statute. The laws on racial discrimination all talk about "discrimination on grounds of race" - not about specific racial groups that face widespread discrimination.
My point re the sex and gender issue was partly to head off any TERFy reading of sex discrimination law, and also that some people like non-binary and intersex people are not specifically protected as their genders and sexes aren't recognised.
Misogyny is a specific form of discrimination that combines gender-based discrimination and sexism, which is based upon the existence gendered violence and a society that sustains it - it's a relationship of unequal societal power. There are currently moves within Parliament to make misogyny a specific hate crime, although given some current issues within the UK government I am uneasy about the way it would be used.
I’d bet real money, right now, that if somebody put a knife into Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees Mogg then within a few days there would be at least four or five posts on this very website about how happy the poster is about it and what a service to the country the attacker had done.
If someone were to publicly post about their intention to assassinate the American president I would not be surprised if they received a visit from the Secret Service and/or FBI. I guess that's just one of those Pond differences. I also wouldn't be surprised if their known associates received similar visits.
Look, the men on those websites are almost certainly not very nice people. Hell, there’s a reason they can’t get a date in the first place. But if less than 95% of what’s posted to them is just teen frustration being vented without any serious intent - or even thought - behind it then I’ll be amazed.
Is that 95% figure a product of anything other than your own wishful thinking? This kind of 'boys will be boys' excuse when it comes to advocating violence against women or in favor of second-class citizenship for women is perhaps a contributing factor to why such positions propagate. I see no more problem with an increased level of scrutiny of various MRA forums than I do with increased scrutiny of white supremacist groups. Both have a well-documented history of vomiting up violent actors (#NotAllNeoNazis).
Also, teenagers can be terrorists too - as any post on Shamia Begum will take pains to remind everyone. Teen frustration in this case can and does lead to clean cut young men chanting 'Jew will not replace us' in US cities.
Having possession of firearms while spraffing off online about how you'd like to commit some mass murder seems to me like an excellent reason for having your firearms licence pulled and guns confiscated, but checking the online footprint of gun owners or finding the identity of someone posting threats online requires proper resourcing at a police or state level.
I'm quite happy for anyone who makes online death threats to have any firearm licence pulled and for forums that egg people on to commit terrorist murders to get the full attention of the relevant forensic specialists to check whether any of them are buying firearms knives etc. but checking that out requires resources and professionals precisely so you can establish the context and tell the difference between someone with a cache of knives planning to attack a Fife mosque (caught and sentenced thanks to his social media posts reaching the attention of the police who searched his house) and the guy frustrated by UK weather who posted on twitter 'Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your s*** together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"
When you have mass murders currently being committed by people who subscribe to certain violent ideologies, forums/channels/groups which put forward and encourage such ideologies definitely could do with investigation by professionals.
Look, the men on those websites are almost certainly not very nice people. Hell, there’s a reason they can’t get a date in the first place. But if less than 95% of what’s posted to them is just teen frustration being vented without any serious intent - or even thought - behind it then I’ll be amazed.
I've known guys like this - very bitter and angry from being bullied at school, not fitting in, and the fact that they are still a virgin, because (as they see it) girls are mean and nasty and prejudiced against them. But what is being considered as needing to be seen as a crime of terrorism is not simply guys saying 'I hate women because they won't date me,' but the active inciting of men to be violent against women. Whether or not it's a young lad saying it out of frustration is not the point, because the incitement happens, and men kill. And some of these frustrated teens can have white hot fury, which can easily be stirred up, ready to explode, and they can be quite vulnerable and easily led, so could be incited.
Any discussion we've had about the people who ran to join Daesh showed how delusional they were about what the group stood for, but they'd been radicalised online.
It seems to me to be a different kind of delusion, though. The Daesh supporters are deluded about the promises of an Islamic State, but the things that were promised could look reasonably attractive in the right light - it's just that they're lies. It's deluding you about a promise of a better future.
The belief that women are a bunch of dogbonking sexfiends is an obviously bonkers belief about current people. You can't explain it away with "there's a war now, but things will be better once IS has won" because it's not a statement about a future promise: it's a statement about current reality. That seems to me to be a different order of delusion - much more akin to flat earthers than Daesh wannabes.
Flat Earthers are mostly stupid but harmless, whereas the incel crowd are harmful.
My point re the sex and gender issue was partly to head off any TERFy reading of sex discrimination law, and also that some people like non-binary and intersex people are not specifically protected as their genders and sexes aren't recognised.
I imagine you're familiar with this ruling that non-binary people are included in the protections for transgender people in the Equality Act 2010. I think the same legal reasoning would apply to intersex people.
Misogyny is a specific form of discrimination [..] it's a relationship of unequal societal power.
So is racism. But all the laws about racism refer to "discrimination on grounds of race", "aggravated on account of the victim's perceived membership of a particular racial group" and so on.
The victim in a racial anything case doesn't have to be a member of a marginalized racial minority - they just have to have been harmed on account of their race. (So, for example, a black guy punching a white guy in the face whilst shouting "you white bastard" commits a racially-aggravated assault.)
I note that the best predictor for radicalisation into violent Islamist movements is apparently a history of misogynistic violence against women.
I think that's actually an argument for using the word 'terrorism' less often. The Prevent strategy and associated discussion of Islamic terrorism in the media make it sound as if adherence to the religion or political alienation are the danger factors and so resources are spent on stigmatising those which just exacerbates the sense of alienation. The word 'terrorism' frames violence as an ideological problem with ideological causes and plays into that.
We need to take domestic violence much more seriously both in its own right and as a precursor to mass violence. But I don't think the connotations of the word 'terrorism' help with that.
The modern kind of radicalisation that happens online increases the threat to a point where it needs the same attention and state resources deployed as other sorts of terrorism.
Seems like a dangerous thing to me. Today it’s the incel groups that post about how much they hate women. Tomorrow it may be web forums that frequently post about how much they hate certain politicians. Where do you draw the line for what is, in effect, government surveillance of online activity? And what level of involvement with such websites is enough for someone to be arrested and locked up before they do something violent?
This the slippery slopergument. That if we stop one group, there's no telling who "they" will want to stop next. This a spurious argument.
How about it's not a slippery slope and if you advocate violence against an identifiable group, you've come into general societal concern because of what you're thinking and discussing, because we know that this is promoting of potentially harmful behaviour toward others? and intervention is required. After the terror attacks of 11 Sept 2001, extensive research about deradicalisation was conducted, with guides and stages that had shown success. Some of the intervention needs to occur before incidents happen.
Having been part of a high-risk-high-need committee in the 1980s, there's even 35 old ideas and data that showed positive effects at preventing violence. It was routine to identify children whose behaviour when preadolescent needed to be addressed, and note I'm saying behaviour, not thought. We know that thoughts underlie and are required for behaviour (at least under current information processing psychological models, e.g., cognitive behaviour therapy - CBT, but we need to address behaviour, not thought. Hence my spurious argument comment, above. There is good data that intervention does reduce risks.
There's data about violence, sexual violence, addictions, social behaviour and social skills. Noting that this isn't about enforcement as the core intervention: it's about addressing the unhappiness the person has within, and the prospective unhappiness they can impose on others. Yes, it is about social control to a degree but in response to behaviour. We need to prevent when we can, only arrest and punish/imprison when we have failed. Of course the zeitgiest (spirit of the times) has shifted and enforcement/punishment is often preferred by policy makes and politicians since the early 1990s.
I define behaviour as also cluding making statements of waiting to harm others, to rape, to murder, to beat-up. These are worthy targets for intervention. Before the person has struck someone or attacked.
But what is being considered as needing to be seen as a crime of terrorism is not simply guys saying 'I hate women because they won't date me,' but the active inciting of men to be violent against women.
That’s frequently a very fine line. You can find posts here in Hell (and even the other boards sometimes) that could be taken in the right light to be inciting violence against certain groups, especially if the measure is not the intent of the poster but how the reader interprets it.
They potentially promoted terrorism at most. But that doesn't make it ok. I'm not very fond of the extreme left wing theme of calling for tories/rich people to be killed even though I'm pretty confident they won't act on it. Eventually some idiot WILL act on it.
In a similar vein, at a number of trials following violent crimes in London, Drill and rap music have been cited in court evidence for incitement of violence see here for a BBC article (link) from Jaunary 2021 which argues that although drill has incited some violence it's more telling a story and the use of the lyrics in trials is unfairly influencing the verdicts against the mainly young black men where this tactic is used. This BBC story from January 2020 (link) discusses a documentary reviewing the evidence that drill music is violent. That article states that
Police have targeted drill music in an attempt to crack down on the violence, asking YouTube to remove videos that they say incite real-world crimes.
Is that OK? This article concludes with:
And while the documentary deliberately avoids making a judgement on the link between drill and knife crime, you're left with the impression that it's only one pixel in a bigger picture.
I think that there's a difference between the bands you listed above and the drill musicians I've commented on and the communities built up around them. In the same way as the community issues around drill music are causing the problems, it's the community being built by the online groups such as Men Going Their Own Way and the subReddits that are now banned that is the issue, because it builds a world view that is reinforced within a support network. The same way that terrorist groups build.
It's always problematic when the focus of a thread talking about misogyny and violence against women segues off to talk about white middle-class men thinking they are in danger. There's no equivalent history of white men being oppressed, targeted or killed by women or black people.
Incels aren't sad lonely men deserving of sympathy because they haven't found companionship or love. They're misogynist, anti-social men who think women owe them sex, want to punish, rape or kill women, are obsessed with mass shootings and gun culture. Most of the white middle-class men I know might be uncomfortable about critiques of white male privilege, but they don't identify with incels and they recognise that violence against women is related to other forms of discriminatory violence against minorities or non-binary people.
The problem with the material in the manosphere is that it is so unreasoningly violent against women, built into a world view where women are the enemy that needs to be destroyed, in one way or another, that we cannot post direct links to it, as it qualifies as hate speech and against this board's remit. So we are left with articles about the world created by these men, and that is easier to twist into a view that women are overreacting, particularly when those who cannot see a problem feel threatened as they being asked to consider their position in the world anyway. Which is how the manosphere sucks people in, starting with an opinion that men are under threat as they are no longer allowed to do x, and the manosphere adds all the x's together to create an aberrant world view.
There’s a wide gap between “women are overreacting and there is no problem at all” and “I don’t think we should define everyone who is a member of a manosphere website as a terrorist”.
That I think the latter in no way suggests I think the former as well.
Even though until a week ago the MGTOW website required that anyone wishing to join gave a mandatory introduction before allowing them to post with moderator checking of anyone joining? To prevent an influx of questionable members?
I'm not very fond of the extreme left wing theme of calling for tories/rich people to be killed even though I'm pretty confident they won't act on it. Eventually some idiot WILL act on it.
You just described my feelings about manosphere stuff perfectly. Now imagine if some idiot DID act on it, and in response someone was earnestly and in all seriousness calling for the whole extreme left wing to be classed as terrorists so that the full machinery of state surveillance and law enforcement could be brought to bear to shut them down. Do you think you might consider that to be an overreaction? Do you think you might have concerns about where the line between “extreme left wing” and “reasonable left wing” might be drawn?
It's always problematic when the focus of a thread talking about misogyny and violence against women segues off to talk about white middle-class men thinking they are in danger.
I thought the thread was about whether misogyny and violence against women should be classed as terrorism?
I can disagree with that suggestion, and even find it concerning and, yes, threatening*, without it meaning I think misogyny and violence against women are ok.
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*= it feels to me like using an orbital railgun to crack a nut. I mean, sure the nut will definitely be cracked but how much collateral damage will there be?
I'm not very fond of the extreme left wing theme of calling for tories/rich people to be killed even though I'm pretty confident they won't act on it. Eventually some idiot WILL act on it.
You just described my feelings about manosphere stuff perfectly. Now imagine if some idiot DID act on it, and in response someone was earnestly and in all seriousness calling for the whole extreme left wing to be classed as terrorists so that the full machinery of state surveillance and law enforcement could be brought to bear to shut them down.
The way in which Prevent-style legislation has already been used is among the reasons why I’m opposed to extending the definition of terrorism (as already stated). I don’t think the policing model adopted as a result is particularly effective and in practice has been used to discriminate against particular communities.
They potentially promoted terrorism at most. But that doesn't make it ok. I'm not very fond of the extreme left wing theme of calling for tories/rich people to be killed even though I'm pretty confident they won't act on it. Eventually some idiot WILL act on it.
I’m not keen in the extreme right inciting angry boneheads to do idiotic and dangerous deeds ( marching on the DC Capitol as a recent example, though Mosley’s BUF thugs marching through the (then) predominantly Jewish East End springs to mind.
I'm not very fond of the extreme left wing theme of calling for tories/rich people to be killed even though I'm pretty confident they won't act on it. Eventually some idiot WILL act on it.
You just described my feelings about manosphere stuff perfectly. Now imagine if some idiot DID act on it, and in response someone was earnestly and in all seriousness calling for the whole extreme left wing to be classed as terrorists so that the full machinery of state surveillance and law enforcement could be brought to bear to shut them down. Do you think you might consider that to be an overreaction? Do you think you might have concerns about where the line between “extreme left wing” and “reasonable left wing” might be drawn?
The problem with the Manosphere - unlike your example - is that some idiot HAS acted on it - not once but several times already. And I'm not meaning Plymouth as that's not proven.
They potentially promoted terrorism at most. But that doesn't make it ok. I'm not very fond of the extreme left wing theme of calling for tories/rich people to be killed even though I'm pretty confident they won't act on it. Eventually some idiot WILL act on it.
I’m not keen in the extreme right inciting angry boneheads to do idiotic and dangerous deeds ( marching on the DC Capitol as a recent example, though Mosley’s BUF thugs marching through the (then) predominantly Jewish East End springs to mind.
The paper I linked to above, twice, shows that the manosphere has segued from Men's Rights Activism (MRAs) into MGTOW over the last decade, and that the MGTOW groups are far more radicalised than earlier. So I would suggest that you are thinking about the MRAs and saying the manosphere shouldn't be regarded as dangerous, whereas I'm thinking of MGTOW groups, which I believe should be regarded as concerning.
And that the police really should not allow a member of MGTOW to retrieve their gun after an anger management course, because from what I've seen of the MGTOW groups, the online support will have negated any work the anger management course will have achieved. (That dig because the shooter in the Plymouth case got his gun back a week ago after an anger management course, and what seems to be insufficient investigation into whether he was safe to hold a gun.)
cross posted with the world because I'm slow and check facts - but I see @chrisstiles has linked the same article above.
They potentially promoted terrorism at most. But that doesn't make it ok. I'm not very fond of the extreme left wing theme of calling for tories/rich people to be killed even though I'm pretty confident they won't act on it. Eventually some idiot WILL act on it.
I’m not keen in the extreme right inciting angry boneheads to do idiotic and dangerous deeds ( marching on the DC Capitol as a recent example, though Mosley’s BUF thugs marching through the (then) predominantly Jewish East End springs to mind.
And that the police really should not allow a member of MGTOW to retrieve their gun after an anger management course, because from what I've seen of the MGTOW groups, the online support will have negated any work the anger management course will have achieved. (That dig because the shooter in the Plymouth case got his gun back a week ago after an anger management course, and what seems to be insufficient investigation into whether he was safe to hold a gun.)
That should happen anyway to someone who has anger management issues, whether or not they are a member of a particular group is irrelevant there.
Do you think that level of surveillance of left wing groups is a good thing or a bad thing?
What I’m trying to tease out here is if you think what these groups are talking about doing is wrong because it’s actually wrong, or just because of who they’re talking about doing it to.
The paper I linked to above, twice, shows that the manosphere has segued from Men's Rights Activism (MRAs) into MGTOW over the last decade, and that the MGTOW groups are far more radicalised than earlier. So I would suggest that you are thinking about the MRAs and saying the manosphere shouldn't be regarded as dangerous, whereas I'm thinking of MGTOW groups, which I believe should be regarded as concerning.
It’s possible, sure. These groups are not something I have any interest in reading or being part of, but I do have this individualistic libertarian streak that dislikes any suggestion of criminalising people’s opinions or beliefs. Even if I don’t like them.
And that the police really should not allow a member of MGTOW to retrieve their gun after an anger management course, because from what I've seen of the MGTOW groups, the online support will have negated any work the anger management course will have achieved. (That dig because the shooter in the Plymouth case got his gun back a week ago after an anger management course, and what seems to be insufficient investigation into whether he was safe to hold a gun.)
There are more than enough red flags there to prevent someone being given a gun, without ever having to bring MGTOW into it. I wouldn’t want a stamp collector with anger issues to have a gun either.
If you're looking for a 'cause' the incels are trying to achieve, it would seem to be to bring about the sort of society portrayed in 'The Handmaid's Tale'.
Do you think that level of surveillance of left wing groups is a good thing or a bad thing?
What I’m trying to tease out here is if you think what these groups are talking about doing is wrong because it’s actually wrong, or just because of who they’re talking about doing it to.
I don't think this discussion is, or should be, a choice between whether the subjects are morally wrong, or whether saying them to a particular audience is a bad thing to do. It's more complicated than that. I'd say it's about intention and risk of real life consequences. As for example:
1) Discussion about killing women or rich people (or whoever) in the context of academic debate, discussion of a film's plot or indeed what we're doing here, clearly isn't wrong.
2) Saying "I hate all women/rich people" is morally wrong in my opinion, but it's neither illegal nor terrorism. It could just about be incitement to terrorism if said to someone who was planning to do something violent and the statement was heard as approval/egging on but that would be a rare set of circumstances.
3) Saying "I am planning to kill women/rich people" but not giving any concrete details to show you really mean it is clearly grounds for some kind of preventative intervention by the police but I don't know the law well enough to know whether it's illegal in and of itself. It could be a horrible joke or a statement of intent to commit a crime/terrorist act and the police would have to assess the risk and act on it.
4) Saying "I think you should kill women/rich people" is also grounds for intervention by the police and probably worse because it is clearly incitement to commit a crime.
5) Saying "I am planning to kill women/rich people on X date in Y place" needs urgent police intervention.
I presume that the police watch organisations that contain many law abiding people and some potential terrorists to spot any of the last three of that list, in the course of which they probably see quite a lot of the top two as well. My idea behind this thread was that incel and manosphere groups should also be subject to such police attention.
(Relatively) rich white men. Also known as the only group it’s still perfectly ok to hate.
It's legally allowable to hate anyone you want, if you have the wit to be discerning and keep on the right side of the law, which is why the law exists. Even (rich) white men are protected by the law from harm from people who hate them. Some would even argue that the law might be seen to favour this group, over poorer people, women, and people of colour. But I think what you mean is that there has, for some time now, been a strong challenge to androcentric, patriarchal society where the millieu of white male privilege has been questioned and found wanting. A very uncomfortable position to occupy if you're a white male. Some white people have been feeling that way, too, over recent issues about racism and slavery.
And if anyone out there thinks it's uncomfortable being 'hated' because he's a relatively rich white man, imagine what it's like to be regarded as less than human because you don't have a dick.
I presume that the police watch organisations that contain many law abiding people and some potential terrorists to spot any of the last three of that list, in the course of which they probably see quite a lot of the top two as well. My idea behind this thread was that incel and manosphere groups should also be subject to such police attention.
Given the outcomes of the Prevent program (largely didn't catch terrorists, criminalised misunderstandings and people with mental health issues), I don't think that the suggestion to extend it is a particularly serious one.
I presume that the police watch organisations that contain many law abiding people and some potential terrorists to spot any of the last three of that list, in the course of which they probably see quite a lot of the top two as well. My idea behind this thread was that incel and manosphere groups should also be subject to such police attention.
Given the outcomes of the Prevent program (largely didn't catch terrorists, criminalised misunderstandings and people with mental health issues), I don't think that the suggestion to extend it is a particularly serious one.
I didn't mention Prevent - the fact that one anti terrorism programme hasn't worked (if it hasn't - I don't know) doesn't mean all anti terrorism activity is futile.
Comments
You appear to have failed to notice I didn’t agree that domestic violence should be labelled terrorism, nor do I think the concept of politically motivated crime having a special category (as it currently does) is a good idea.
What I would like to see, is the information we already have about how violence is formented being used effectively by law enforcement. I am not convinced that imprisoning folk is always the answer - but intervening in effective ways would be helpful.
We have many laws that already cover these precursors, but they are not well used.
Thank you - my fault for not thinking it through. Should have started the discussion in Epiphanies.
It is not at this time, default, that someone under active investigation for downloading images of illegal sexual abuse to have bail restrictions on their use of the internet. Why not ?
It is not at this time, default, for someone under active investigation for rape to be automatically subject to a restraining order keeping them away from the alleged victim. Why not ?
People *convicted* of abusing their partners are allowed to drag them through family courts for years trying to get access to their children. Why ?
(I realise not all victims/survivors in these situations are female, and if anything male victims of domestic violence are even less well served.)
I disagree. Treason still seems like a useful legal category to have.
Why ?
Because attempting to overthrow the government is a serious offense that doesn't necessarily track with other crimes. Even though it involved burglary, Watergate was not about burglary.
I can find you some websites where I and others like me are the target for similar treatment if you like. There are extreme socialist forums that think people like me should be shot and our families (if any survive) charged for the bullet. I don’t think they should be criminalised or treated as terrorists either, unless they actually try to do something about it.
I’d bet real money, right now, that if somebody put a knife into Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees Mogg then within a few days there would be at least four or five posts on this very website about how happy the poster is about it and what a service to the country the attacker had done. There are posts right now wishing them ill. Oh, all couched in “I don’t condone violence, but…” or similar, of course, but then news outlets never quote that part.
Look, the men on those websites are almost certainly not very nice people. Hell, there’s a reason they can’t get a date in the first place. But if less than 95% of what’s posted to them is just teen frustration being vented without any serious intent - or even thought - behind it then I’ll be amazed.
If someone were to publicly post about their intention to assassinate the American president I would not be surprised if they received a visit from the Secret Service and/or FBI. I guess that's just one of those Pond differences. I also wouldn't be surprised if their known associates received similar visits.
Is that 95% figure a product of anything other than your own wishful thinking? This kind of 'boys will be boys' excuse when it comes to advocating violence against women or in favor of second-class citizenship for women is perhaps a contributing factor to why such positions propagate. I see no more problem with an increased level of scrutiny of various MRA forums than I do with increased scrutiny of white supremacist groups. Both have a well-documented history of vomiting up violent actors (#NotAllNeoNazis).
@Marvin the Martian I'm curious - what do you mean by '[people] like me'? Do you mean a marginalised group, or white men, or what? Regarding attacks on key members of the government, it's disingenuous to compare such imagined attacks to the terrorist attacks that already have happened by young white men involved in the Manosphere who - and I think this is key - openly claim to be copying other 'martyrs' for the cause. There is also the issue that women as a class are marginalised by men; current UK equality legislation does not identify misogyny specifically as a form of discrimination, but sex discrimination that can be claimed by any gender (for the record, UK law only recognises two sexes/genders - but somewhat confusingly does not differentiate between sex and gender, and uses the terms interchangeably). That is the big problem here.
Without linking into quarantined subReddits or onto the manosphere itself, it's difficult to give you a flavour of quite what this stuff is like, but it's scary.
And no, I haven't said that I think terrorists should be locked up either, as I'm not convinced by the efficacy of prisons, and can probably find articles demonstrating how many people are radicalised in prison. But they certainly shouldn't be handed back guns after an anger management course.
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AIUI, UK law takes an expansive reading of sex and gender in discrimination law, so it doesn't matter whether you think you're discriminating on grounds of sex or gender or some combination - it's just as much illegal discrimination.
Curious why you think misogyny specifically should be called out in the statute. The laws on racial discrimination all talk about "discrimination on grounds of race" - not about specific racial groups that face widespread discrimination.
A quick primer - the term 'redpilled' comes from the film series The Matrix, where the protagonist Neo can choose to take either a blue pill or a red pill. The blue pill allows him to carry on in his current reality; the red pill allows him to see that his current 'reality' is just a simulation. The term 'redpilled' quickly became associated online (via 4chan) with incels and the far-right (who inevitably were the same group) - it's a way of showing that you have now opened your eyes to the 'true reality' of the world. Predictably this starts of with classic anti-Semitic tropes about (((globalists))) ('bankers', 'Soros', 'the Elite' etc are also common anti-Semitic dogwhistles used in this context). Note the striking similarity to QAnon language. That's not an accident. As an aside, such redpilled types tend to be violently transphobic especially to trans women, which is funny because the Matrix movies are made by trans women and the red pill refers to the estrogen tablets trans women take as part of hormone treatment (when the films were written/made, the main brand came as red pills). The similarity between the blue pill and a certain very famous Blue Pill of the 90s is also striking.
'Blackpilling' is the nihilistic next step. Whereas redpilled types wanted to improve their lot via things like pick up artist tactics and arguing with feminists online, blackpilled types believe that the world that rightly belongs to them - white cishet Christian/Western men - has been stolen from them and is now hopelessly under the control of TPTB, the Other, the Wokerati, the SJWs. The only way they can take it back is by force.
Any discussion we've had about the people who ran to join Daesh showed how delusional they were about what the group stood for, but they'd been radicalised online.
My point re the sex and gender issue was partly to head off any TERFy reading of sex discrimination law, and also that some people like non-binary and intersex people are not specifically protected as their genders and sexes aren't recognised.
Misogyny is a specific form of discrimination that combines gender-based discrimination and sexism, which is based upon the existence gendered violence and a society that sustains it - it's a relationship of unequal societal power. There are currently moves within Parliament to make misogyny a specific hate crime, although given some current issues within the UK government I am uneasy about the way it would be used.
Also, teenagers can be terrorists too - as any post on Shamia Begum will take pains to remind everyone. Teen frustration in this case can and does lead to clean cut young men chanting 'Jew will not replace us' in US cities.
I'm quite happy for anyone who makes online death threats to have any firearm licence pulled and for forums that egg people on to commit terrorist murders to get the full attention of the relevant forensic specialists to check whether any of them are buying firearms knives etc. but checking that out requires resources and professionals precisely so you can establish the context and tell the difference between someone with a cache of knives planning to attack a Fife mosque (caught and sentenced thanks to his social media posts reaching the attention of the police who searched his house) and the guy frustrated by UK weather who posted on twitter 'Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your s*** together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"
When you have mass murders currently being committed by people who subscribe to certain violent ideologies, forums/channels/groups which put forward and encourage such ideologies definitely could do with investigation by professionals.
I've known guys like this - very bitter and angry from being bullied at school, not fitting in, and the fact that they are still a virgin, because (as they see it) girls are mean and nasty and prejudiced against them. But what is being considered as needing to be seen as a crime of terrorism is not simply guys saying 'I hate women because they won't date me,' but the active inciting of men to be violent against women. Whether or not it's a young lad saying it out of frustration is not the point, because the incitement happens, and men kill. And some of these frustrated teens can have white hot fury, which can easily be stirred up, ready to explode, and they can be quite vulnerable and easily led, so could be incited.
It seems to me to be a different kind of delusion, though. The Daesh supporters are deluded about the promises of an Islamic State, but the things that were promised could look reasonably attractive in the right light - it's just that they're lies. It's deluding you about a promise of a better future.
The belief that women are a bunch of dogbonking sexfiends is an obviously bonkers belief about current people. You can't explain it away with "there's a war now, but things will be better once IS has won" because it's not a statement about a future promise: it's a statement about current reality. That seems to me to be a different order of delusion - much more akin to flat earthers than Daesh wannabes.
Flat Earthers are mostly stupid but harmless, whereas the incel crowd are harmful.
I imagine you're familiar with this ruling that non-binary people are included in the protections for transgender people in the Equality Act 2010. I think the same legal reasoning would apply to intersex people.
So is racism. But all the laws about racism refer to "discrimination on grounds of race", "aggravated on account of the victim's perceived membership of a particular racial group" and so on.
The victim in a racial anything case doesn't have to be a member of a marginalized racial minority - they just have to have been harmed on account of their race. (So, for example, a black guy punching a white guy in the face whilst shouting "you white bastard" commits a racially-aggravated assault.)
I think that's actually an argument for using the word 'terrorism' less often. The Prevent strategy and associated discussion of Islamic terrorism in the media make it sound as if adherence to the religion or political alienation are the danger factors and so resources are spent on stigmatising those which just exacerbates the sense of alienation. The word 'terrorism' frames violence as an ideological problem with ideological causes and plays into that.
We need to take domestic violence much more seriously both in its own right and as a precursor to mass violence. But I don't think the connotations of the word 'terrorism' help with that.
This the slippery slopergument. That if we stop one group, there's no telling who "they" will want to stop next. This a spurious argument.
How about it's not a slippery slope and if you advocate violence against an identifiable group, you've come into general societal concern because of what you're thinking and discussing, because we know that this is promoting of potentially harmful behaviour toward others? and intervention is required. After the terror attacks of 11 Sept 2001, extensive research about deradicalisation was conducted, with guides and stages that had shown success. Some of the intervention needs to occur before incidents happen.
Having been part of a high-risk-high-need committee in the 1980s, there's even 35 old ideas and data that showed positive effects at preventing violence. It was routine to identify children whose behaviour when preadolescent needed to be addressed, and note I'm saying behaviour, not thought. We know that thoughts underlie and are required for behaviour (at least under current information processing psychological models, e.g., cognitive behaviour therapy - CBT, but we need to address behaviour, not thought. Hence my spurious argument comment, above. There is good data that intervention does reduce risks.
There's data about violence, sexual violence, addictions, social behaviour and social skills. Noting that this isn't about enforcement as the core intervention: it's about addressing the unhappiness the person has within, and the prospective unhappiness they can impose on others. Yes, it is about social control to a degree but in response to behaviour. We need to prevent when we can, only arrest and punish/imprison when we have failed. Of course the zeitgiest (spirit of the times) has shifted and enforcement/punishment is often preferred by policy makes and politicians since the early 1990s.
I define behaviour as also cluding making statements of waiting to harm others, to rape, to murder, to beat-up. These are worthy targets for intervention. Before the person has struck someone or attacked.
(Relatively) rich white men. Also known as the only group it’s still perfectly ok to hate.
That’s frequently a very fine line. You can find posts here in Hell (and even the other boards sometimes) that could be taken in the right light to be inciting violence against certain groups, especially if the measure is not the intent of the poster but how the reader interprets it.
They potentially promoted terrorism at most. But that doesn't make it ok. I'm not very fond of the extreme left wing theme of calling for tories/rich people to be killed even though I'm pretty confident they won't act on it. Eventually some idiot WILL act on it.
In a similar vein, at a number of trials following violent crimes in London, Drill and rap music have been cited in court evidence for incitement of violence see here for a BBC article (link) from Jaunary 2021 which argues that although drill has incited some violence it's more telling a story and the use of the lyrics in trials is unfairly influencing the verdicts against the mainly young black men where this tactic is used. This BBC story from January 2020 (link) discusses a documentary reviewing the evidence that drill music is violent. That article states that Is that OK? This article concludes with:
I think that there's a difference between the bands you listed above and the drill musicians I've commented on and the communities built up around them. In the same way as the community issues around drill music are causing the problems, it's the community being built by the online groups such as Men Going Their Own Way and the subReddits that are now banned that is the issue, because it builds a world view that is reinforced within a support network. The same way that terrorist groups build.
Incels aren't sad lonely men deserving of sympathy because they haven't found companionship or love. They're misogynist, anti-social men who think women owe them sex, want to punish, rape or kill women, are obsessed with mass shootings and gun culture. Most of the white middle-class men I know might be uncomfortable about critiques of white male privilege, but they don't identify with incels and they recognise that violence against women is related to other forms of discriminatory violence against minorities or non-binary people.
That I think the latter in no way suggests I think the former as well.
You just described my feelings about manosphere stuff perfectly. Now imagine if some idiot DID act on it, and in response someone was earnestly and in all seriousness calling for the whole extreme left wing to be classed as terrorists so that the full machinery of state surveillance and law enforcement could be brought to bear to shut them down. Do you think you might consider that to be an overreaction? Do you think you might have concerns about where the line between “extreme left wing” and “reasonable left wing” might be drawn?
I thought the thread was about whether misogyny and violence against women should be classed as terrorism?
I can disagree with that suggestion, and even find it concerning and, yes, threatening*, without it meaning I think misogyny and violence against women are ok.
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*= it feels to me like using an orbital railgun to crack a nut. I mean, sure the nut will definitely be cracked but how much collateral damage will there be?
I’m somewhat bemused that this possibility should only occur to you now (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2018/oct/15/uk-political-groups-spied-on-undercover-police-list https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/17/greenpeace-included-with-neo-nazis-on-uk-counter-terror-list ).
The way in which Prevent-style legislation has already been used is among the reasons why I’m opposed to extending the definition of terrorism (as already stated). I don’t think the policing model adopted as a result is particularly effective and in practice has been used to discriminate against particular communities.
I’m not keen in the extreme right inciting angry boneheads to do idiotic and dangerous deeds ( marching on the DC Capitol as a recent example, though Mosley’s BUF thugs marching through the (then) predominantly Jewish East End springs to mind.
The problem with the Manosphere - unlike your example - is that some idiot HAS acted on it - not once but several times already. And I'm not meaning Plymouth as that's not proven.
Well no. I would hope that goes without saying.
The paper I linked to above, twice, shows that the manosphere has segued from Men's Rights Activism (MRAs) into MGTOW over the last decade, and that the MGTOW groups are far more radicalised than earlier. So I would suggest that you are thinking about the MRAs and saying the manosphere shouldn't be regarded as dangerous, whereas I'm thinking of MGTOW groups, which I believe should be regarded as concerning.
And that the police really should not allow a member of MGTOW to retrieve their gun after an anger management course, because from what I've seen of the MGTOW groups, the online support will have negated any work the anger management course will have achieved. (That dig because the shooter in the Plymouth case got his gun back a week ago after an anger management course, and what seems to be insufficient investigation into whether he was safe to hold a gun.)
cross posted with the world because I'm slow and check facts - but I see @chrisstiles has linked the same article above.
It clearly doesn’t.
That should happen anyway to someone who has anger management issues, whether or not they are a member of a particular group is irrelevant there.
Do you think that level of surveillance of left wing groups is a good thing or a bad thing?
What I’m trying to tease out here is if you think what these groups are talking about doing is wrong because it’s actually wrong, or just because of who they’re talking about doing it to.
It’s possible, sure. These groups are not something I have any interest in reading or being part of, but I do have this individualistic libertarian streak that dislikes any suggestion of criminalising people’s opinions or beliefs. Even if I don’t like them.
There are more than enough red flags there to prevent someone being given a gun, without ever having to bring MGTOW into it. I wouldn’t want a stamp collector with anger issues to have a gun either.
I don't think this discussion is, or should be, a choice between whether the subjects are morally wrong, or whether saying them to a particular audience is a bad thing to do. It's more complicated than that. I'd say it's about intention and risk of real life consequences. As for example:
1) Discussion about killing women or rich people (or whoever) in the context of academic debate, discussion of a film's plot or indeed what we're doing here, clearly isn't wrong.
2) Saying "I hate all women/rich people" is morally wrong in my opinion, but it's neither illegal nor terrorism. It could just about be incitement to terrorism if said to someone who was planning to do something violent and the statement was heard as approval/egging on but that would be a rare set of circumstances.
3) Saying "I am planning to kill women/rich people" but not giving any concrete details to show you really mean it is clearly grounds for some kind of preventative intervention by the police but I don't know the law well enough to know whether it's illegal in and of itself. It could be a horrible joke or a statement of intent to commit a crime/terrorist act and the police would have to assess the risk and act on it.
4) Saying "I think you should kill women/rich people" is also grounds for intervention by the police and probably worse because it is clearly incitement to commit a crime.
5) Saying "I am planning to kill women/rich people on X date in Y place" needs urgent police intervention.
I presume that the police watch organisations that contain many law abiding people and some potential terrorists to spot any of the last three of that list, in the course of which they probably see quite a lot of the top two as well. My idea behind this thread was that incel and manosphere groups should also be subject to such police attention.
It's legally allowable to hate anyone you want, if you have the wit to be discerning and keep on the right side of the law, which is why the law exists. Even (rich) white men are protected by the law from harm from people who hate them. Some would even argue that the law might be seen to favour this group, over poorer people, women, and people of colour. But I think what you mean is that there has, for some time now, been a strong challenge to androcentric, patriarchal society where the millieu of white male privilege has been questioned and found wanting. A very uncomfortable position to occupy if you're a white male. Some white people have been feeling that way, too, over recent issues about racism and slavery.
And if anyone out there thinks it's uncomfortable being 'hated' because he's a relatively rich white man, imagine what it's like to be regarded as less than human because you don't have a dick.
Given the outcomes of the Prevent program (largely didn't catch terrorists, criminalised misunderstandings and people with mental health issues), I don't think that the suggestion to extend it is a particularly serious one.
I didn't mention Prevent - the fact that one anti terrorism programme hasn't worked (if it hasn't - I don't know) doesn't mean all anti terrorism activity is futile.