How John Stuart Mill Demolished Roosh’s Feminist Opponents Over 150 Years Ago Lessons from On Liberty

With Return of Kings publisher Roosh taking a victory lap after holding two successful talks in Canada—despite the entire Canadian establishment trying to stop him—butthurt social justice freaks are licking their wounds and trying to regroup with the #RooshIsARapist hashtag campaign.

#RooshIsARapist is an attempt to get Roosh’s books removed from Amazon and other online booksellers for “promoting” rape, based both on out-of-context quotes from said books and the general feminist fear of men having sex with women and enjoying it.

But don’t you dare call it censorship. As SJWs love to Pharisaically parrot, only the government can engage in censorship. Private citizens mobbing together to metaphorically burn someone at the stake isn’t censorship, any more than flashing schoolmarms at the mall isn’t a sex crime because hey, at least you aren’t trying to rape them.

In fact, the left has conjured up a term for those who criticize SJW-led mob harassment: “freeze peach,” a neologism that reveals both their authoritarian mindsets and their utter immaturity:

@Cernovich PSA; look up the meaning of censorship. It's not something that private citizens are usually capable of. It's a government thing.

— Thomas Wiggins (@11twiggins) August 16, 2015

The fact that this line of argument has become so popular shows how unsophisticated and ignorant (in the most literal sense of the term) SJWs are. Thomas Wiggins and his co-belligerents are completely unaware that there is a body of philosophy demolishing their arguments going all the way back before America’s founding. In particular, John Stuart Mill, one of the most influential philosophers in European history, specifically shredded this line of reasoning nearly two centuries ago.

On Liberty On SJWs

John Stuart Mill’s 1859 book On Liberty is regarded as one of the foundational documents of Western liberalism, and is so highly regarded to this day that it serves as the book of office for the U.K.’s Liberal Democrats. Here is what Mill had to say about social justice warriors:

The time, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the “liberty of the press” as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear. This aspect of the question, besides, has been so often and so triumphantly enforced by preceding writers, that it needs not be specially insisted on in this place. Though the law of England, on the subject of the press, is as servile to this day as it was in the time of the Tudors, there is little danger of its being actually put in force against political discussion, except during some temporary panic, when fear of insurrection drives ministers and judges from their propriety; 1 and, speaking generally, it is not, in constitutional countries, to be apprehended, that the government, whether completely responsible to the people or not, will often attempt to control the expression of opinion, except when in doing so it makes itself the organ of the general intolerance of the public. Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one with the people, and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in opposition to it. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

The gist of Mill’s argument is that not only is government censorship of ideas not the sole threat to freedom of speech, it’s not even the biggest threat. If people cannot speak their minds out of fear of being fired from their jobs or made unemployable, then free speech does not exist regardless of any protections it may have from the government.

Liberty does not spring from a law or an amendment to a constitution, but from the very ways that a people behave. A society in which dissidents are hounded into silence by private citizens is just as much a tyranny as a totalitarian dictatorship.

Additionally, Mill noted that the kind of decentralized online harassment that SJWs engage in is more dangerous when the people are on the government’s side. Free speech laws such as the First Amendment exist to protect minority opinions, not majority ones. Even in a repressive communist state such as North Korea, someone who states an opinion held by the majority will never be arrested or persecuted. A society can only call itself “free” if it allows those who hold minority views to speak without fear, because it is for those minorities that the First Amendment and other similar laws were created.

Astroturfing Outrage

It’s also worth noting that the “outrage” over Roosh’s books and speeches is almost entirely manufactured. As I pointed out in a previous article, before he came to Canada, Roosh gave the same speech in four cities in three other countries with nary a peep. It wasn’t until a handful of bored dilettantes in the Great White North took notice that the #DenyRooshV movement came into being.

The same goes for other witch hunts that SJWs launch. Very rarely do these keyboard warrior-driven hashtag campaigns spill over into the real world. Most people are apathetic about these issues, even when it comes to those they disagree with, and can’t be bothered to lift a finger to agitate for someone they’ve probably never even heard of to be fired. For example, I’ve gotten countless death threats for my writing, yet not a single one of my detractors has even attempted to confront me in person.

The reality is that the “popular” outrage against Roosh, myself and neomasculinity is almost entirely astroturfed. In the specific case of Roosh’s Canadian engagements, the anti-Roosh protests were a creation of Sara Parker-Toulson and Aurelie Nix, working in conjunction with the country’s sympathetic, incestuous media establishment. They reflect the opinions of a small minority of Canadians who have a disproportionate amount of influence in society.

It remains to be seen whether this current SJW tantrum will have any legs, but what we do know is that the great men of the Western canon had denounced modern feminist tactics and beliefs long before they were dirty, sick thoughts in their fathers’ heads.

Read More: Are Toronto Mayor John Tory And Councilman Norm Kelly Promoting The Violation Of Canadian Law?