Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik's anti-feminist manifesto

I've just been having a browse through Anders Breivik's seminal work of hateful schlock, 2083: A Declaration of European Independence. Taking into account the murder of so many people, it makes for even more depressing reading than the usual internet bile. Unsurprisingly, alongside multiple expressions of racism, fascism, Islamophobia, white supremacism, etc. etc., we have good old anti-feminism. Misogyny. Anti-womanism.

A good job has already been done over at 'Manboobz' (I don't like the name but in this case I think the posts are worth linking to), extracting some of the particularly nasty anti-women sentiments. The resident blogger also points out, most pertinently, that these sentiments aren't at all out of place in the cluster of 'Men's Rights' websites and forums that fester all over the internet.

Tributes in Norway

Here, for your delectation, are a couple of beauties from the manifesto:

"Ladies should be wives and homemakers, not cops or soldiers, and men should still hold doors open for ladies. Children should not be born out of wedlock. Glorification of homosexuality should be shunned. Jurors should not accept Islam as an excuse for murder."

"Where do we see radical feminism ascendant? It is on television, where nearly every major offering has a female “power figure” and the plots and characters emphasise inferiority of the male and superiority of the female. It is in the military, where expanding opportunity for women, even in combat positions, has been accompanied by double standards and then lowered standards, as well as by a decline in enlistment of young men, while “warriors” in the services are leaving in droves. It is in government-mandated employment preferences and practices that benefit women and use “sexual harassment” charges to keep men in line. It is in colleges where women’s gender studies proliferate and “affirmative action” is applied in admissions and employment..." etc etc.

Like - I wish radical feminism was so powerful as Breivik believes? Actually, I can't be bothered to look for any more extracts. It goes on in much the same vein for 1518 pages.

Ok so the point is that this isn't just the work of one 'madman'. Breivik obviously had plenty of support from numerous others with the same ideas as him. He believed in his worldview, and he isn't the only one who does. The amount of rabid anti-feminism on the internet is shocking, and that's just the internet. I rarely meet committed anti-feminists in person (or at least, they don't tend to admit it to me) - but I know that plenty of them exist.

It is maybe the lesser of two evils that misogynists are permitted to reinforce their prejudices and disseminate their anti-woman ideology through the internet. But much, much more needs to be done before there is a widespread cultural recognition that (if you think it is helpful to speak of 'extremists' at all) anti-feminism is an extremist ideology just like racism, Islamophobia and all the rest. Its no coincidence that Breivik held all these beliefs concurrently. They're all connected.

Apologies for broken record-itis, but kids should really be taught this stuff in schools. I think that that is one of the most important steps forward for women's equality that could be made at present. It's only too obvious that where there is no education otherwise, there will be a bedrock of committed misogynists that bolster the ideas of those, like Breivik, who will go on to commit violent terror. Of course there isn't a catch-all solution to these problems, and maybe there will always be retrograde extremists who slip through the net. But it would be nice to see open sexism reduced to the same sort of level as, let's say, holocaust denial. That won't happen until we recognise the extent of the problem.

It's time for British Zionists to speak out with Arabs in Israel

A few weeks ago I was invited on an excursion to Israel organised by the wonderful people at New Deal of the Mind. It was funded by BICOM. Here's something I wrote about the trip: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ray-filar/it’s-time-for-british-zionists-to-speak-out-with-arabs-in-israel

The refugee area in East Jerusalem.

Where rape is concerned, talk isn't good enough.

I have a guest blog on The F Word. Hopefully it is not triggering, but it does concern rape and recent discussions of rape. If you'd like to read it, click here: http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2011/05/rape_in_the_media

What ludicrous distinctions, its obviously the same person. Oh, I didn't need to say that. This brilliant image makes the point all by itself.

"Same old Tories" doesn't tell me much

This article was originally published on Labour Uncut: http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2011/03/28/same-old-tories-doesnt-tell-me-much/#more-8605

Really, Ed, really?

“Same old taxes, same old Tories”. Ed Miliband’s response to the chancellor’s “budget for growth” last week was characterised by an aggressive, knowing ennui. It was as if Miliband had cast himself as an aging prima donna reclining on a (red) velvet chaise-longue, warning her child away from an only seemingly reformed no-good suitor. “I know what they’re like, you know what they’re like”, he seemed to be saying. Don’t be fooled by “friendly” George’s marriage proposal, also known as his budget for “growth”. He’s still the same man who stole your money to buy a dead puppy as a present for your sister.

The presumption Miliband and his speechwriters are making is that we do know what the Conservatives are like; that we will easily remember what they’re like if we cast our collective minds back to 1997 when they were last in government (or when they last proposed to us, depending on how long this analogy can be dragged out). This message was clearest during one of the speech’s defining moments, in which, against a supportive background of taunts and cheers from buoyed-up Labour ministers, Miliband described Osborne as embodying the “hubris and arrogance of the early 1990s, the same broken promises…he’s Norman Lamont with an iPod”.

Big words. In fact, pretty funny words, if you know who Norman Lamont is. Presumably the majority of MPs can remember, but during the time of the last Tory government I personally was more interested in learning to read and tie my shoes up unaided than in keeping abreast of party politics. That’s not to say that it takes longer than three seconds to google Norman Lamont, but, in terms of making what should be an easy appeal to an increasingly large base of dispossessed young voters whose political consciousness wasn’t fully formed during the 90s, he shouldn’t think that “same old Tories” hits hard without proper explication. He can’t assume that we all have politics degrees, particularly now that nobody can afford a degree.

Of course, for every potential young Labourite for whom “classic Tory con” means at least a week in the (soon-to-be-closed) library, there are many more who internalised Thatcher-hatred, if not Major-hatred, with their mother’s blissfully unsnatched milk.

Neither should Miliband focus only on the young to the exclusion of anybody born before 1970. But if the point is to win over those wavering in their support for the coalition, he should consider that reiterating that the Tories haven’t really changed speaks only to those who were won over by Cameron’s “progressive Conservatism” election campaign. Nobody who has read a newspaper in the last year can be fooling themselves that there is anything progressive about this government’s programme.

Miliband needs to find more imaginative ways to convey more clearly exactly what the broken promises and economic deceits of this government are. A great example of this in his anti-budget speech was the line he nicked from the institute of fiscal studies, that the budget gives with one hand, and “takes away with lots and lots of other hands”. This calls to mind an illustration of the government as an amorphous, ACME-white-gloved-hands machine which is figurative enough to give some substance to figures about fuel duty drops and VAT rises. The slogan “too far and too fast” is also relatively credible, however much it sounds like an adolescent sexual encounter, or the working title of the misogynist car-chase film The Fast and the Furious.

As well as pointing out what the problems with Tory-Lib Dem policy are, a better, clearer explication of Labour’s economic alternative to the “budget for growth” would be most welcome. Indeed, the huge support that resulted in at least a 250,000 person turn-out for the march for the alternative is not at all surprising. It is clear that if there are alternatives. We want to hear about them, and we want to hear about them in a detailed, extensive, well-publicised way, preferably published in the form of a weighty tome that can be used for the purposes of hitting Nick Clegg.

“Same old Tories” preaches only to the converted. In a time of opposition, this is not enough.