Vox Day Has Issues

Theodore Beale's nom de plume may have stopped writing his WorldNetDaily column, but he'll be remembered for his wild conspiracy theories and racially charged, misogynistic rhetoric.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 1/31/2013

Given that my primary goal in writing this column was to convince the American people to aggressively defend their God-given, Constitution-guaranteed liberties, I have to conclude that the most honest way to describe it is 11 years of unmitigated failure. I’m not ashamed of that, nor do I consider the effort wasted. But, at the end of the day, American freedom has been yielded.

Day managed to sign off without telling his readers who he really is: Theodore Beale, son of one-time WND financial backer, former fugitive from justice and current convicted felon Robert Beale.

But if Day's column was a failure as he claims, it's less because readers didn't take his libertarian advice and more because what they remember more are the extreme things he wrote.

Conspiracy theories

Ina July 22 column, Day suggested that the theater shootings in Aurora, Colo., may be a "false-flag operation" committed by the Obama administration as a pretense for gun control:

Unfortunately, with an administration that has openly claimed a legal right to assassinate Americans without trial and is known to have engaged in a similar, but much larger false flag operation in “Operation Fast and Furious,” you cannot rule out the possibility that this incident is more than a lucky break for the government. Potential echoes of “Fast and Furious” can be seen in Holmes’ purchase of the weaponry utilized; where did an unemployed graduate school dropout find the money to obtain a rifle that costs around $1,250 and an estimated $1,500 in ammunition? One can’t help but ask such questions in times like these.

If the shootings were a false-flag operation, the Obama administration appears to have badly misread the American people again. Instead of seeing it as an example of the need for more gun control, most Americans have interpreted it as a powerful indictment of gun-free zones and an example of the need for further liberalization of carry laws. It was probably fortunate, for the sake of American freedom, that 71-year-old Samuel Williams happened to use his .38 to shoot two armed teenage thugs at an Internet cafe only a week earlier, thus presenting Americans with the significant distinction between an armed citizenry and an unarmed one.

No doubt many will avert their eyes, turn off their minds and dismiss the possibility of government involvement in the shootings as “conspiracy theory.” But 10 years ago, in a column titled The secret lust for power, I showed how the conspiracy theory of history is the only one that holds up in light of centuries of documentary evidence. Argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy, and as the following quote from a 1,700-year-old conspiracy on the part of the heir to the imperial throne should suffice to illustrate, only the uneducated and the ignorant will simply assume the intrinsic impossibility of false-flag operations.

[...]

Were the Denver shootings a false flag operation? It will probably be years before anyone can say decisively one way or the other. But if Holmes commits suicide or otherwise dies in custody, that will be a strong indication that he is one more in a long and suspicious series of lone gunmen.

Theodore Beale, aka Vox Day

On June 5, Day hopped aboard the anti-vaccine bandwagon by embracing the largely discredited claim that they cause autism:

Vaccine advocates – although propagandists would be a more accurate term – often correctly claim that there is no scientific evidence proving that vaccines have ever killed anyone or caused autism. Therefore, they claim vaccines can be considered the cause of nothing but a cure for cancer, an end to war and the elimination of all human disease except that caused by dirty, unvaccinated children who are homeschooled by religious bigots. To even consider the mere possibility of questioning the intrinsic and perfect goodness of vaccines, any vaccine given for any reason, is to be not only anti-science, but personally responsible for murdering anyone who died of a disease that would have been prevented by vaccination.

[...]

The reason that the vaccine propagandist claim is correct is because there is also no scientific evidence that vaccines have not killed anyone or caused autism, because there is absolutely no valid scientific evidence on the matter. Most of the “science” in the studies that are widely cited by those who insist that vaccines are safe are simply statistical reviews, which involve as much use of actual science as polling former Playboy models. In the very few cases where an actual scientific experiment has been performed, the populations compared have not been between a vaccinated group and an unvaccinated control group, but rather two different groups that are both vaccinated to varying degrees.

The vaccine propagandists defend the failure of scientists to gather scientific evidence by begging the question. They insist that it would be unethical to permit a control group of children to go without vaccination, due to their assumption that the risks of vaccination are significantly outweighed by the dangers of the diseases vaccinated against. Thus, they perpetuate ignorance on the actual safety or danger of the current U.S. vaccine schedule.

Day goes on to argue that "It is estimated that between 90 percent and 99 percent of all vaccine-related events go unreported" because infant deaths reported as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) are actually because of vaccines.

Saving the white race

Day has also been unusually concerned about the future of the white race. In a May 2010 column, he declared that there's no such thing as the American "melting pot," we should all stay in our little cultural enclaves, and whites should boot the brown people out of the country and "reclaim their traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture."

Day seemed proud to note that "from the mid-17th century to the mid-19th century, the New England states had almost no immigration for 200 years" (and "when the Irish did finally come to America, they were fewer, more culturally similar, and they came in a more gradual manner from farther away"). Day then declared that those glory days can be restored if Americans "can find the courage" to engage in ethnic cleansing and "expel" various ethnic minorities:

If Americans can find the courage to consciously reject the myth of the melting pot and expel the Mexicans from the American Southwest, the Arabs from Detroit and the Somalis from Minneapolis, they can reclaim their traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture. This is highly improbable because so many descendants of that culture have rejected it in favor of the vibrancy of diversity while those who haven't are far too frightened of criticism and social rejection to even articulate their thoughts.

Day reiterated his concern in a Dec. 3 column, in which he pontificated on separatist movements in Spain and Scotland, then used the insipiration to float the idea of a separatist movement in the U.S. for "white Americans who still hold to traditional values" and who don't like "the tens of millions of post-1965 immigrants from various non-European nations around the world, or their urban enablers."

Nazi references

One could argue whether or not there's a link with the above, but Day also has a penchant for dropping Nazi references.

In a May 2006 column, Day liken removing illegal immigrants from the U.S. to the Nazis getting rid of Jews:

[President Bush, aka "Dear Jorge"] lied when he said: "Massive deportation of the people here ["the Mexican nationals who have helped lower America's wage rates by 16 percent over the last 32 years"] is unrealistic – it's just not going to work."

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society.

That reference got deleted shortly thereafter. Day wrote on his blog that "this was clearly on Mr. Farah's orders," adding that while he disagreed with the edit, Farah has a "right to do whatever he likes with his site."

Day made the immigrant-Nazi link again in a September 2011 column:

Housing and jobs are two reasons why Republicans reacted so negatively to Rick Perry's declaration that immigrant children need to be educated because otherwise "they will become a drag on our society." Most Republicans, most Americans, don't want Texas to educate immigrant children. They want Texas to send them back to their homelands. It wasn't so much the fact that Perry favors taxpayer spending on immigrant education, or even his claim that those who don't are heartless, that caused such revulsion as his obvious assumption that immigrants and their children will never leave America.

Many, if not most, Americans view the mass invasion of their country by Mexicans and others about as favorably as the citizens of Czechoslovakia, Holland and France viewed the mass immigration of Germans into their countries during the 1940s.

Day unloaded a whole bunch of Nazi references in a January 2012 column:

Last week, Germany launched its most aggressive attack on another country since Operation Barbarossa in 1941. Der Spiegel led with a headline titled “Griechenland soll Kontrolle über Haushalt abgeben,” which has been misleadingly translated into English as “Germany proposes Greece relinquish some fiscal powers.” A more accurate translation would be: “Greece shall give up control over its budget.”

Strangely, the countries, which historically opposed German attempts to conquer small European nations, France and the United Kingdom, are generally supporting this 21st century revival of Germany’s policy of Anschluss. The demand for Lebensraum is financial this time rather than physical, but the basic concept remains the same.

[...]

Seen in this light, the German demand for the financial annexation of Greece appears as not only absurd and provocative, but intentionally absurd and provocative.

[...]

In Europe and in the United States alike, the heyday of the banks is rapidly coming to a close. The looming revolution is not a battle between capitalism and socialism, or a class war between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, but between the corrupt bank-government axis and the alliance of pretty much everyone else.

Day also described German chancellor Angela Merkel as "Bundeskanzlerin," which, it turns out, is not a Nazi reference; it just sounds like one.

Issues with women

Day's definition of libertarian "freedom" is notably lacking when it involves women: He doesn't like that women can vote, and considers women's rights "a disease that should be eradicated." In a May 2011 column, Day warned young men not to marry "career" women because they have a bad habit of having their own thoughts:

So, what is a young man who wishes to be a happy and productive member of society but does not wish to find himself locked into a life of post-divorce serfdom to an ill-tempered, overweight woman with a legal obligation to children who may not even belong to him? Fortunately, the answer is both clear and easily applied. To increase your chances of marital and familial success in life, it is vital to stay away from what are known as "career" or "working" women.

While this will not eliminate all the risks of what has become known as Marriage 2.0, it will return a man's probability of successful marriage to that of the earlier, more marriage-friendly era. Marriage to a stay-at-home wife rather than one with a full-time job reduces the risk of divorce by nearly one-third. Just the simple act of avoiding romantic involvement with working women is nearly enough on its own to again make marriage a viable option for young men.

Moreover, stay-at-home mothers make for much better mothers as they spend 91 percent more time with their children than working mothers do. The most remarkable observation is that stay-at-home mothers spend 12 more minutes per day on the physical care of their children than working mothers spend with their children in total; the net result of this insufficient attention is that the children of working mothers are 23 percent less likely to pass college entrance exams, 29 percent more likely to be unemployed and are more likely to be overweight by age 11.

Day laughably adds: "Although it may appear to be disturbingly like one, this column is not intended as an indictment of career women or working mothers. The facts are what they are, and my only objective is to point out to men that it is a mistake to conclude the societal changes of the last 40 years have rendered all American women equally unsuited for marriage." Then he even more laughably likens career women to drug addicts:

No one would dispute that the odds of successfully raising a family with a meth head or crack addict tend to be on the low side, and no one should be upset by the statistically observable fact that men who wish to marry and have children will have a significantly greater probability of success if they choose to marry women who are dedicated to making a career of being a wife and mother.

The only suitable woman for Day, apparently, is one who lives only through her children and husband and has no independent thoughts of her own.

He has also endorsed the lament that marriage no longer means "an expectation of regular sex" for men.

Day complained about women again in his Oct. 7 column, in which he went from complaining about the Federal Reserve to likening "monetary debasement" to supposed debasement of marriage. Day quotes somebody named "Dalrock," whom he calls "an influential Christian writer on intersexual relations" even though he appears to be just a blogger hiding behind a pseudonym, lamenting about what "marriage for men no longer means":

• being the legally and socially recognized head of the household
• an expectation of regular sex
• legal rights to children
• lifetime commitment

Day didn't quote the rest of "Dalrock's" post, which echoes Day's own laments about "career women" who develop "even more feminist attitude" as they become "older and less attractive," adding: "She also now has a legal incentive to divorce in the form of cash and prizes and nearly guaranteed child custody. Oh, and we also have some new laws which assume you are an abuser if your wife decides she needs some drama or extra leverage against you."

"Dalrock" also grumbles about being unable to find a virgin to marry:

There’s just one more small thing. It took her so long to find you that you can’t reasonably expect her chastity to be perfectly in tact. I mean, it’s mostly there, but it suffered a ding or two. Her virginity was gone to her first boyfriend, but don’t worry it was very romantic and she still has fond memories of that special time. Not too long after that those jerks at the frat house did a number on her pride, but you can’t hold that against her. She’s a bright gal, and after that she learned how to hook up smart. There were, I think, a few other clips along the way. Nothing too serious, but after all remember it did take her forever to find you. Your little bird may not be quite as young and innocent as she would have been had she found you sooner, but there is always hope.

Day is simpatico with that sentiment as well. He wrote in a March 18 column: "In college, we were told that women were just as interested in sex as men, but that having sex with them while they were drunk was rape, having sex with them when they regretted it the next day was rape and not having sex with them was also rape if they felt sufficiently spurned."

* * *

Day wrote of his future plans in his farewell column:

Let me be clear and assure everyone that I have joined neither the IMF nor a revolutionary militia. I have simply reached a point in my life where I wish to focus my writing on novels such as “A Throne of Bones” rather than political commentary. And I am deeply appreciative of Joseph and Elizabeth Farah, WND and the commentary editors for permitting me to write so freely on these pages for so long.

As the title suggests, Day's book appears to be an attempt to ride the "Game of Thrones" complex-fantasy-world bandwagon. But does it also cover Day's obsessions with racial purity, conspiracy theories and subjugation of women?