Roosh V

Roosh V is the pen name of a self-published American author and blogger who wrote dating and travel books, founded the website Return of Kings, and in May 2019 withdrew most of those books from sale, saying he no longer wanted his work used to lead men into what he called sin.

The Library of Congress name authority file records the authorized heading “Vörek, Roosh” with “Valizadeh, Daryush” and “Roosh Valizadeh” as variants, its evidence being the title pages of his own books: A Dead Bat In Paraguay (2010), which bears “Roosh Vörek”, and Free Speech Isn’t Free (2016), which bears “Roosh V” on the title page and “Roosh Valizadeh” on page three.

Self-Published Books and Websites

His books were self-published and sold through his own web store and through general retailers. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s entry on him dates his blog to 2006 and his forum to 2008.

Return of Kings

Return of Kings was in operation by October 2012, the date of the earliest archived capture of its about page. That page described the site in its own words as “a site for masculine men who like having sex with thin, feminine women,” aiming to “usher the return of the masculine man in a world where masculinity is being increasingly punished, shamed, and — in some cases — outlawed.” It closed with the line “ROK is published by Roosh V.” The Southern Poverty Law Center gives 2012 as the site’s founding year.

On 16 February 2015 he published a post titled “How To Stop Rape” proposing “make rape legal if done on private property.” The archived version of that post carries a prefatory note reading “The following article was published as a satirical thought experiment”; the archive cannot establish when that note was added.

The February 2016 Meetups

Meetups were announced for 6 February 2016 in 43 countries. On 3 February 2016 he posted a cancellation in full:

I can no longer guarantee the safety or privacy of the men who want to attend on February 6, especially since most of the meetups can not be made private in time. While I can’t stop men who want to continue meeting in private groups, there will be no official Return Of Kings meetups. The listing page has been scrubbed of all locations. I apologize to all the supporters who are let down by my decision.

ABC News in Australia reported the following day that the cancelled gatherings had been scheduled in 43 countries including Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Japan. Greens senator Larissa Waters said there was no place for such views about women; immigration minister Peter Dutton said “Australia doesn’t welcome people to our country who disrespect women,” while noting that Valizadeh had not applied for a visa. The Southern Poverty Law Center records petitions to bar him drawing roughly 58,000 signatures in Scotland, 92,000 in the United Kingdom and 100,000 in Australia.

Removal by Retailers, 2018

In a post dated 10 September 2018 he wrote that beginning Friday 7 September Amazon had removed the paperback and Kindle editions of nine of his books, including his then-new release Game, and that the notices he received cited “content guidelines” without specifying which had been breached. He added that his entire catalogue had also been removed by Barnes & Noble and Kobo. Amazon made no public statement of its reasons; the account of the removals is his.

Withdrawal of the Books, 2019

On 30 May 2019 he published a post titled “I Have Unpublished 11 Of My Books,” writing “I have taken the following eleven books out of print” above a list that includes Bang, Bang Poland, Bang Ukraine, Bang Iceland, Don’t Bang Denmark, Bang Lithuania, Bang Estonia, Don’t Bang Latvia, Roosh’s Argentina Compendium and Roosh’s Brazil Compendium. He said the titles could no longer be bought from his store and that new copies would be removed from third-party outlets.

He tied the withdrawal to a simultaneous decision to forbid discussion of casual sex on his forum, writing: “I can no longer be a central node that men use to commit morally questionable acts. In other words, I don’t want my work to be actively used to lead men into sin or to enable them to commit it.” He described the decision as religious and personal — “These decisions are personal, stemming from my relationship with God and the plan that He has set out for me” — and said he was not making it for others, expected no protection from deplatforming, and was “being mocked by everybody.”

He kept several titles in print and gave reasons for each: Game, because of the proportion of readers using it in relationships and marriages, with its sales page edited “to tone down the sexual benefits”; and 30 Bangs, Poosy Paradise and The Best Of Roosh Volume 1 because they “reveal the truth of my past and serve as a warning that sexual obsession is not the correct path,” adding that these were “more embarrassing to me than harmful to others.” Of the withdrawn titles he wrote, “I find that they have no redeeming value.” Nine books remained on sale. He also wrote that “my past will continue to follow me for the rest of my life.”

How He Has Been Characterized

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Extremist Files entry describes him as “one of the most public and reviled online misogynists,” characterizes Return of Kings as “a website festering with misogyny,” and says he advocated “for predatory and forceful sexual behavior,” quoting the line “No means no — until it means yes” from his book 30 Bangs. Those are the SPLC’s characterizations, attributed here to it and not adopted by this page. The entry carries no date; its most recent cited reference is from February 2018, so it predates the 2019 change described above and does not address it.

Current Status of the Sites

Both principal sites are gone. The Wayback Machine’s last successful capture of returnofkings.com is from June 2020. The domain rooshv.com resolved but returned an HTTP 522 error when requested on 1 September 2026, and archival captures show the same 522 response at intervals from October 2024 onward; the pages cited on this page are therefore cited from archived captures.

What Is Not Established Here

Removed for want of a source meeting this project’s standard: the page’s previous claim that he was “a notable figure in the manosphere online community during the 2000s and 2010s,” which asserted prominence with nothing attached to it, and its stub flag. No birth year is given: the Library of Congress record carries 14 June 1979 but attributes that date to Wikipedia, which is a lead and not a citation here, and no independent record was found.

This audit did not verify, and the page therefore does not assert: the size of his readership or forum at any date; book sales figures beyond his own claim about Game’s launch, which is not repeated here as fact; his nationality of residence at any given time; his education or prior employment; his religious affiliation by denomination, since the 30 May 2019 post speaks of God and sin but names no church; any account of what he has published or done since 2019; and any characterization of his political alignment. The SPLC material is reported as that organization’s assessment only. No criminal charge or conviction is asserted, and none was found in the sources consulted.