One of the world’s most notorious pick up artists says he has become a Christian and is a changed man.
Daryush “Roosh” Valizadeh was one of the internet’s most infamous voices for what he had to say about women. The Southern Poverty Law Centre described him as a “male supremacist” who “advocated for predatory and forceful behaviour in his books, on his Roosh V blog, and on his popular manosphere platform, Return of Kings.”
Return of Kings was a Men’s Rights Activist (MRA) page that insulted women. The site went on indefinite hiatus in 2018 after being banned from Paypal and Disqus.
Mr Valizadeh says that he has returned to the Orthodox faith of his youth, after taking “the God pill.”
Mr Valizadeh has set new requirements under commentary on his personal blog, including that he will not allow comments encouraging extramarital affairs or sex outside of marriage.
Despite the changes, he has yet to take down any of the hateful opinion pieces he has written about women, suggesting that women should not have the right to vote and that men could pressure women into sex (“No means no—until it means yes”).
The blog We Hunted The Mammoth is sceptical of the new direction. In a recent post, the blog argued that an anti-women thread was still discernible in Mr Valizadeh’s writings.
On 13 March, for example, he tweeted that women “are influenced by Satanic influences that control how their sexuality is displayed. Therefore when you are immediately aroused by a woman’s body in public, and drop all rational (sic) to desire her intensely, you are being tempted by Satan. She is merely the conduit.”
The blog argues that,“The new “Christian” Roosh looks an awful lot like the old awful Roosh, except that now he sometimes makes references to Satan when he spews his hate.”
In 2016, Mr Valizadeh was denied entry into Australia on character grounds. A petition calling on the government to prevent him from entering gained over 60,000 signatures in 24 hours.
Jonathan Foye is Insights’ Editor
