After the Richard Dawkins Foundation and the Center For Inquiry announced their merger, PZ Myers published Rebecca Watson’s claim that atheist organisations “will continue polishing Richard Dawkins’ knob until he dies.”
PZ also claimed that Christopher Hitchens “had no problem with killing Muslims and American Indians,” and he misrepresented Godless Spellchecker Stephen Knight’s exposure of his previous inaccurate claims about Christopher Hitchens.
While all of this is now predictable, his latest smears also include his most bizarre yet. Referring to what he calls “atheism as a movement,” he writes that “we (now) have an atheism where it is acceptable to rail against feminism, because feminists should be raped and killed.”
Even by PZ’s own standards, this is his most delusional smear yet. It is analogous to Dan Aykroyd in the movie Trading Places, snarling incoherently through his Santa beard after being caught trying to frame Eddie Murphy by planting drugs in his office desk drawer.
I have recorded many of the PZ smears of recent years. One consequence of there being so many, is that each smear can hide behind the others, as we become desensitised to such behaviour and internally normalise it.
So this time, I’ll let this one stand on his own.
PZ Myers says that “we (now) have an atheism where it is acceptable to rail against feminism, because feminists should be raped and killed.”
It is incredible to think that reasonable people once took him seriously.
You… you… SEAL LION, you!!! lol.
“It is incredible to think that reasonable people once took him seriously.”
He was bad back then, but not as bad as he is now. And he was bad towards the religious, which made it seem not so wrong to many of his readers. Which, unfortunately, included me. It wasn’t until Gelato Guy that it finally hit me how vile and reprehensible PZ Myers could be (and is, pretty much all the time now).
Expect him to only get worse.
I’ve read PZ for a decade, probably, and – as well as a atheist and a biologist who’s outspoken – I believe he’s deeply interested in preventing injustice and promoting equality.
He tends to use “atheism” to mean “the collective of people who claim to be atheists,” for example. In fact, he tends to use “x” to mean “the behaviour of those who associate themselves with an organization or movement purportedly devoted to x.” He doesn’t always say he’s doing this, so that seems a potential source of confusion for those less familiar with him. It also strikes me as a North American thing to assume people might infer on their own (and even then, not always a reasonable one).
Counting any such claimants as atheists, there certainly are people sending threats and derision to others, including women – examples are thankfully copied and pasted often enough for that to be discovered by someone wondering what the fuss is about. I believe he’s speaking about having observed this.
So, I wouldn’t say that PZ’s delusional, but I would say he neglects to be careful and scrutinizing about his own use of language at times, and it’s always been difficult for me to see how one’s success in communicating isn’t contingent upon that care. It seems like prompting this blog entry, for example, could have been prevented if he’d employed it.
In his vile string of “we now have an atheism …. ” PZ again threw fellow (ex?) FtB blogger and female POC Jamila Bey under the bus with:
“We have an atheism that sees science-denying, anti-government radically conservative organizations as fertile recruiting grounds.”
Bull in a china shop.
I think that he is just trolling for web hits now. FTB increased its traffic from 20k to 100k people per day for a few days after the original Godless Spellchecker piece and he wants to repeat the performance
Bonus point for “Trading Places” reference. Next time, try “Coming to America”.
I so love those movies.
Wow. Now I am genuinely, no kidding this time, starting to think that Myers might actually be losing his mind.
At this point I suspect he’s publishing this shit because he craves your attention.
His current horde couldn’t muster the numbers or the collective IQ to play snap.
Murphy had a fantastic first few years in the movies. Trading Places is possibly the greatest US comedy.
Definitely one of the smartest.
And certainly did more for social justice than all the rage bloggers combined.
It is truly sad to see someone with so much potential for good fall prey to the toxic politics of them and us. Ever further down the rabbit hole, ever more disconnected from the facts on the ground.
If atheism is the movement that PZ thinks he is part of, I want nothing to do with it. I will never consider myself a fellow traveler in any movement that constant fibber PZ Myers is part of. Thankfully, he is part of the SJW movement, which is NOT atheism, has nothing to do with atheism, or skepticism, or liberalism, or humanism, etc. PZ is one another train, on the wrong track, heading towards a cliff. Even today, the excellent Godless Spellchecker (the genius who exposed CJ Werleman for the plagiarist that he is) caugtht PZ bullshitting about Christopher Hitchens. There is plenty you can criticise Hitch for without resorting to outright fibs. PZ got angry and started to sob, typically typing out a tweet announcing he angry and upset he is with Hitchens fans, or something, rather than owning up and admitting he was wrong. However, we have everything capped, and on record. We got you, PZ. When will you learn – you can not beat us. We will never stop exposing you.
He is increasingly unhinged, angry, and comes across as a bitter, failed, human being who has lost most of his friends and associates. The remaining “friends” consist of screaming mad SJW ideologue bullies who throw abuse at everyone, over at his comment site. A site that I have boycotted for years. I know some of his remaining blog-mates at FTB are embarrassed at his behaviour, but they are frightened of rocking the boat. Quite what Maryam is still doing at FTB, I don’t know. She is too good for that network. Patheos is thatta way >>>>, Maryam.
Anyway, it is good to keep shining the light on muppets such as PZ Myers. Just like we shine a bright light on racists and the far right, SJW bullies like PZ need to be constantly exposed and ridiculed in public. Ridicule is how we defeat FTBullies and SJWs.
Myers’ “we (now)” line doesn’t suffer from lack of clarity (as in Steven Barnes’ interpretation above) but lack of charity and indeed lack of any basis in reality. Myers’ accusation of atheists is not only unfounded and unfair, it’s strikingly misdirected.
There are people whose behavior matches Myers’ accusation, but it’s a group he hasn’t criticized (or, not since his conversion to 3rd wave feminism).
This is a “collective of people who claim to be x” in the world who exhibit “behaviour of those who associate themselves with an organization or movement purportedly devoted to x”, so they match your description of Myers’ definition of x-ists. Some of these x-ists – let’s call them jihadists – apparently feel convinced that people they feel are behaving in manner antithetical to x, or who are not devoted to x in the correct manner, “should be raped and killed.” (Or, more accurately, that some “should be raped” and others “should be killed”.) And it’s well-documented that these convictions have been acted upon, numerous times.
As far as I can tell, none of these x-ists identifies as an atheist, in fact quite the opposite.
And Myers remains silent on this while fanning his remaining followers’ anger about “fellow” atheists (usually prominent white men but also women, black & white, who have not followed the narrative he approves of).
Double thumbs-up to Skeppers.
And, of course, Michael Nugent.
Throughout history, when “Dear Leaders” were found to have feet of clay (which is a euphemism for anything from being a genocidal maniac to a fraud and a liar), there always have been apologists who denied reality, and pretended that said feet were in fact rock solid.
“Dear Leader knew nothing about the mass murders. He never laid a finger on anyone.”
“Dear Leader is not corrupt; he just didn’t know what others were doing in his name.”
“I’ve read Dear Leader for a decade, probably, and – as well as a atheist and a biologist who’s outspoken – I believe he’s deeply interested in preventing injustice and promoting equality. He can’t possibly be a liar, a fraud and a habitual smear monger. He is just misunderstood. [Steve Barnes, paraphrased from a comment above.]”
I am no longer surprised when the members of his flock turn a blind eye to the many flaws of Dear Leader PZ Myers. It’s what true believers do. Just today, in the comments below the latest evidence of Myers’s deplorable mentality (as quoted by Michael in the OP), one of the flock (rorschach) wrote: ‘I’m rereading Marx, Trotzki[sic] and Engels these days and I’m just like “yes of course” all the time.’
Neither Myers nor any of his flock objects, when the mass murderer Trotsky is hailed as a Social Justice Warrior avant la lettre. And that’s why Myers and his kind are called the regressive left. When you seek inspiration in the writings of a Bolshevik who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, then you couldn’t be more regressive if you tried.
Of course he was just repeating what Amy Roth had written, there. Which doesn’t improve the situation at all, it just shows what a mindless herd the SJWs are, what a simple-minded bot Myers is for a bunch of privileged muck-rakers. Roth makes the statement, she’s one of the righteous, so it’s true and everyone smeared by it is just a murderer/rapist, no questions asked. No skepticism, no need for evidence, it’s all a matter of faith to this particularly cultish bunch.
Yes, well, he never was much of a thinker, but he was sticking up for science in the beginning, and only later was he initiated into the unthinking repetition of slogans that is the stock peddled by SJWs. It didn’t require a change of mind, since he never showed evidence of having considered any of the oppositions’ positions on anything whatsoever, thus it was easy for him to join with people who believe that only the right positions (theirs) are even worthy of thought.
But he at least paid lip service to skepticism and the examined life prior to buying into the SJWism that he has now embraced for his entire life. It was then that he gave up any pretense of caring about mere evidence. To him, power (however small it really was) meant that he never had to say he was sorry–or wrong.
I am just surprised that anyone gives the long long ago disgraced PZ Myers the time of day. Why bother with this piece of human flotsam? This is also the first time I have seen reference to R. Twatson since elevatorgate. Michael, do you mind? We don’t need to know this shit about these assholes. You are obviously obsessing over these jerks. Like the rest of us, you need to drop it and move on. I mean, otherwise people are going to think YOU are the crazy one for going on and on and on and on and on and on about the guy. Just sayin
“It is incredible to think that reasonable people once took him seriously.”
Those people should do at least a little bit of hanging their heads in shame, Michael. Especially if they helped to promote his shtick with invitations to speak at conferences and the like.
This stuff was always obvious to anybody paying proper attention. It’s just that people didn’t care when his targets were creationists or fundies. And that was a moral failing on their part. They ought to have cared.
PZ is, and always has been the scorpion in the story of the Scorpion and the Frog. What you see now is what he’s always done, it was just that when the target was “bad”, his vicious tendencies were ignored at best and praised at worst. His role in “Pepsigate” showed just how petty he is and how bad an idea it is to give him any form of power. But no one really minded him attacking a $BIGCORP.
The ends rarely justify the means. In fact, the means may be more important than the ends. If the only way to a goal leaves a trail of pain, how worthwhile can that goal be?
I think it’s important to understand the larger context here, and where a lot of this stems from. There’s a term that’s being used more, “Virtue Signaling”. That is taking strong, even extreme moralistic stances with little actual moral/ethical weight behind them, or much concern for actual progress. The point isn’t to create a better world…it’s to show the right people that you’re one of them. That particular culture is rife with virtue signaling.
Virtue signaling is a big problem, because even if you agree with the goals (to some degree) there’s huge issues with it. Both in terms of, quite frankly, the mindlessness behind it all, as well as the extremism pushing away potential support for your cause.
The lack of ability to accept a win…or at least part of a win…is a big part of what you’re seeing here.
Steven Knight points out several things on Twitter:
1) It’s completely asinine to act as though Hitchens’ opinions on the Iraq War carried any policy weight. PZ continues to make statements saying that Hitchens has blood on his hands because he was supportive of the war, yet makes no such statements for the likes of Glenn Greenwald or Hillary Clinton, the latter being someone who actually voted for authorization of military force and thus might actually have some degree of culpability.
2) Even a cursory overview of PZ’s Twitter feed for references to Hitchens (let alone a thorough examination of the Pharyngula archives) show that PZ was still promoting, supporting, and defending Christopher Hitchens for YEARS after the point at which he claims he first realized that, in his mind, Hitchens was pro-genocide.
When I saw Dawkins announce this merger on Twitter, I thought to myself, first and foremost this is significant in the war to reclaim atheism/skepticism from the regressives. Judging by the amount of salt generated over at TFB, they think so too.
As for PZ losing his mind, in the comments he wrote, “My atheism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit”.
“As for PZ losing his mind, in the comments he wrote, “My atheism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit”.”
PZ’s version of “atheism” has been bullshit for a long time. PZ’s “atheism” now sees him alongside the likes of CJ Werleman and various Islamists, who he enables.
Also, a great example of the cult-like denial from his blind followers can be found in the form of a yapping, sobbing bloke called “Latsot”. He keeps moaning and crying at me on Twitter because I point out that PZ ADMITTED he was accused of sexually molesting a student of his. We only have PZ’s version of events, and according to SJW and FTBullies standards, we should ALWAYS believe the victim. But wait…apparently we should not believe the victim in the case of PZ Myers, and Latsot had the audacity to ASK FOR EVIDENCE to support the case of the victim! Asking for evidence is a crime called “hyperskepticism” and enables rape culture, apparently, but not in the case of PZ Myers, who is above suspicion, of course. Well, he is to his deluded followers, of which Latsot is a member of a dwindling bunch of idiots.
Remember, it is OK when they do it.
Michael you yourself are partly responsible for these ilk to prosper. You were attacking Thunderf00t while he was one of the rare publishers exposing PZ Myers and the rest of the SJW’s. Instead of siding with people like Thunderf00t you gave the SJWs material.
Now we have a situation that SJW have almost but won the battle.
– All major universities have become re-education camps for future SJW’s
– People disagreeing with them are losing jobs because of SJW bullying
– Democratic frontrunner and likely next president of USA is an SJW (self proclaimed ‘progressive and feminist’)
In an interesting development at Myers’ blog network FTB, it appears that several of the bloggers may be planning to jump ship and start their own blog network:
http://the-orbit.net/
Has Myers become too toxic even for his former friends?
Even better than Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places, Myers has become like Taylor Doose at the Dance Marathon. “You tried to take my megaphone! Guards! Guards!!”
I followed the link and it says
Does this mean those are ALL leaving? After Brayton and the hippie dude? Not to mention the purge of Ophelia Benson?
Myers and Watson — a powerhouse tag team in action. These are the people who were quick to skewer Sir Tim Hunt based on hearsay from a person with an agenda, but never took the time to update their hit pieces when it was shown that Hunt was not the monster they made him out to be. They’re not intellectually honest, and their shoddy blogs show their dishonesty for everyone who bothers to fact check. Of course, as we saw with Myers’ grenade post, he will alter his blog’s content to suit his narrative, rewriting history as it happens.
Myers and Watson are people who use identity politics and faux outrage to drum up support for their eroding blogs and Patreon income. There is nothing of value coming from these people that advances atheism. Even worse for them, there is nothing coming from them that advances their true passion: feminism. The era of the outrage machine is waning, and these two were at the forefront. They have nobody to blame but themselves for the erosion of their prominence in the A/S community.
@The Yeti,
This just screams for another Downfall parody.
“Dear Leader, Michael Nugent has written another devastating piece against you.”
“That Irish wanker? I’ll let Lousy Canuck and Stephanie Zvan deal with him.”
“Erm, Dear Leader… Lousy and Zvan belong to a group of FTBers who are setting up an independent blog network. They already have a website, the-orbit.net.”
“Wait, what? The fucking assholes! The filthy traitors! The back-stabbing douchebags! Who do think they are? Do they really think they amount to anything outside my network? Nobody will read those worthless losers once they leave FreethoughtBlogs. They are nobodies! Fucking non-entities! They owe everything to me. I enabled them…. I suppose that miserable little shrimp Alex Gabriel is leaving too? The fucker dared to turn his back on me on my own network. ”
“And Greta Christina.”
“To think I defended her filthy rape porn…. Still, this is not the end. I’m certain my Horde will remain loyal to me…. And I can still count on the intellectual artillery of Dr Richard Carrier PhD. He is not leaving too, is he?”
“Not as far as we know, Dear Leader.”
“That’s at least something, then. Without Carrier we would really be in the shit.”
I’m sure the P-Zombies are lapping it up. No surprise there, after all, Peezus is the poster boy for self-loathing, white knights. At least for those not currently cowering in some Safe Place like A+.
Sorry PZ, but you don’t get to appropriate the term “atheist” for your own poorly defined political ends. I was an atheist while you were hanging off your mum’s tit, and I don’t care about your made-up definitions of commonly accepted terms. You ain’t no Daniel Webster, mate.
Easy to point and laugh (and he really really deserves it) but the stakes are higher for rationality in Ireland and everywhere else:
http://goddoesnt.blogspot.it/2016/01/ophobophobia-and-religion-of-regressive.html
Does anyone understand irony?
Another apologist who is claiming that Dear Leader is being misunderstood?
I am not claiming anything. Why do you label me?
Just Asking Questions (which is verboten, I know).
I understand irony. To what or whom are you attributing that quality?
Do you think Peezus is being ironic? What’s ironic about accusing someone of promoting genocide?
Michael,
You once offered to act as mediator in the atheism ‘schism’ that started in 2012…I assume that you now fully understand what we were all on about back then?…(‘we’ being the people who stood on the other side of the fence from people such as PZ Myers, Ophelia Benson, Rebecca Watson, Stephanie Zvan, Greg Laden etc.)
You mean what looks like crude stereotyping, obviously false accusations, and continual demonization of his opponents, that occurs in context with similarly false claims, with which his commenters nearly always agree?
Yes, if that’s the “irony,” I guess we miss it, along with everyone else who isn’t a simpering apologist for their dear leader (and even most of those “miss” the “irony”).
We don’t miss the irony of those who excuse their dear leader of any wrong while claiming a superior objectivity that is hardly in evidence.
Glen Davidson:
Interesting that “we”, the people who bravely stood up to that mob of bullies and anti-liberal SJWs, are now stronger than ever, while they have become discredited. Myers’ network has fragmented and most atheists, humanists, and secularists think PZ is a nasty little bully with no redeeming features. Laden, PZ’s enforcer who enjoyed trying to get people fired, was seen off quickly enough, and has not vanished from the scene. Watson sounds like she is about to start crying in her latest video, moaning about how not enough people dislike Dawkins. She gets hardly any conference invites now, and can’t shake off the accusations of anti-semitism that have dogged her for 3 years. Benson is an outcast, having fallen out with the SJWs over trans issues. Svan now fails to organise events and conferences that attract more than a dozen people. Look at the last event she organised – nobody was in the audience except other SJW bloggers – and Dick Carrier creepily dancing at a bar.
We have completely humiliated and destroyed them. Just as I said we would. They attempted to bully and intimidate everybody who disagreed with them. We fought back from the start. Some, like Nugent, joined the crusade late, but better late than never.
The thing is, we have not finished with them yet.
“And Dick Carrier, creepily dancing at a bar”
This is the name of my band’s new album, interestingly enough.
Have you misread the post ? Myers is effectively quoting Amy Roth who said
If you believe myers statement is a smear you are effectively concluding that surly amy is not telling the truth.
Deepak said
“If you believe myers statement is a smear you are effectively concluding that surly amy is not telling the truth.”
Considering the inaccuracy in her art exhibition, you know, the one where she cropped men out of a picture to make it appear as if the individuals being mocked were all women and thus bolster her claims vis the evil sexist misogynist trolls, I would have no problem with that conclusion.
Aaaand, I just realised Deepak’s game. You know fully well, Deepak, that being based in Ireland, Michael has to be very careful what he says regarding people’s honesty. Sneaky mate, very sneaky.
Why do you bother?
Drop the subject.
The guy is a dick and shows no signs of ever being anything but.
Don’t report him and his efforts.
@Deepak Shetty,
Even if Surly Amy is telling the truth (always a big if with these ‘Skepchicks’, who can be reduced to tears by a T-shirt), you cannot conclude from some random troll comments that there exists “an atheism where it is acceptable to rail against feminism, because feminists should be raped and killed.” Which is jumping to conclusions like a demented kangaroo.
But then, we are talking about PZ Myers here, who seems to lose all his critical faculties as soon as a feminist woman claims to be under attack.
We now have an atheism where it is unacceptable to rail against islamists, because islamists are an oppressed minority.
We now have a Redshirt where it is unacceptable to rail against Blueshirts, because Goldshirts are an oppressed minority.
Deepak: I made an innocent comment on Pharyngula and immediately had feminists make nasty slanderous comments and even direct violent threats.
We now have a feminism where men are falsely accused of misogyny and threatened to get cutup with a broken bottle.
As a Pharyngulite and (I’m guessing) an intersectional feminist please don’t slander me or threaten me with violence. It just isn’t right.
We now have a feminism where it is acceptable to dismiss people based on their gender and skin colour, because feminism is just the notion that women are people too.
Unless atheists genuinely do believe feminists should be killed or raped, she isn’t.
Amy Roth:” I told I was part of a clique of radical feminists who should be raped and killed.”
Roth’s claim is completely void of any evidence. Who told her what she talks about? Was it anyone influential in the Atheist/Skeptic community?
Or was it a random troll, like the random trolls who tell pretty much anyone that they should be raped and killed?
For the record I don’t think that anyone with a functioning moral compass thinks that feminist should be “raped and killed”. However many think that their false statements, cognitive distortions and hyperbolic statements should be exposed and corrected, just like the false statements, cognitive distortions and hyperbolic statements of any other group.
If people hate the label of femism it’s because of cowards like PZ hiding behind it in between spewing their false statements and hate.
His followers and he himself have perverted labels like feminist and liberal with old motte and bailey tactics. They’ll change definitions in an instant to their advantage and to the destruction of any meaning in them.
“Do you believe in equality and gay rights and such? Great that means you’re a feminist and/or a liberal. Now do you agree to all my horseshit illeberal beliefs, censorship, authoritarianism, defence of abhorrent actions by religious groups, hate and bile filled lies about everyone who ever disagreed with me and the regressive left? No? Well then you’re a right wing racist conservative misogynist, you have to be because you’re not me”
Myers is deeply unpleasant, but the whole thing is not a false dichotomy as between support for Myers or Dawkins. I have to say that I find both of ’em deeply unpleasant characters. Their online activities do them no favours.
Yes, and just what does this all have to do with making Trump into a great candidate?
As relevant as throwing Dawkins into a discussion that had nothing to do with him at all.
Deepak @39
The fact that Amy Roth said it first has no bearing on PZ saying it, unless you are saying either PZ is a mindless echo reflection of Amy Roth, unable to think or form his own opinions, or that PZ repeating *and agreeing* have no value because “Amy said it first”.
Amy says a lot of things. So does PZ. PZ is responsible for the things he says regardless of who said them first. You would absolutely hold him to this on a scientific claim he was repeating and agreeing with, the same thing applies to sociology/politics.
PZ repeated and agreed with those words, he can just own them. Trying to blame Amy to justify your (relentless) blind support of PZ is just…tacky.
Michael, why do you say: ” PZ also claimed that Christopher Hitchens “had no problem with killing Muslims and American Indians” as if that’s a gross mischaracterisation of Hitchens position?
I’m not sure of Hitchen’s position on american indians, but he certainly did support the 2003 invasion of Iraq, with all the horrible consequences that entailed, including the killing of hundreds of thousands of both Muslims and secular Iraqis.
PZ is trying to get his readers to focus on the death and rape threats feminists receive so he can take his readers attention off legitimate criticisms of him and his followers. By focusing on online death and rape threats (which are almost never credible threats), he can distract us from the fact that he and his feminist followers are not experts on rape prevention as evidenced by how he handled a rape situation a couple years ago which arguably allowed a rapist to escape.
PZ and other feminists complain about rape culture when it is in fact people within the feminist movement who are the biggest spreaders of rape myths.
Like many, I was a die-hard Pharngula fan for many years – my pre-work morning ritual consisted of reading though all of the posts and comments from the previous day.
Then came Rebecca Watson – she that can do no wrong. I get that he stuck up for her and supported her (even though I had no idea who she was or why she was so popular), but when he began attacking and baning people that merely questioned some of the things she was claiming, that was too much. and as has been mentioned, the ‘commenters’ there are little more than the atheist equivalent of Trump supporters, eager to gang up on anyone not toeing the line.
Add to that the whole ‘Do as i say, not as i do’ regarding feminism and what not to say even as he jokes about the feminist introducing him at a talk to ‘meet him in his room later’…
Can’t stand him any more.