UPDATE: The CBC has confirmed with Facebook that Minassian’s post declaring himself an incel and hailing Elliot Rodger is real.
By David Futrelle
As I write this, it’s still not completely clear if Alek Minassian, the alleged driver of the van that killed ten pedestrians in Toronto yesterday in what appeared to be a very deliberate attack, is in fact a self-identified “involuntary celibate” trying to take revenge against the “Chads” and “Stacies” and other “normies” he blames for ruining his life — or if these reports are simply some sort of 4chan-style hoax.
But on the Incels.me forum, one of the more egregious hangouts for incels online, many are already hailing the alleged mass murderer as one of their own.
In an assortment of threads that popped up after the news media began to report on a supposed Facebook post from Minassian announcing that “the Incel Rebellion has … begun,” some of the Incels.me regulars are celebrating the killings and the alleged killer as “life fuel” for them and their nihilistic, misogynistic, misanthropic “movement.” (Click on the pics below to see the comments in context on Incels.me.)
Naturally, it didn’t take long for one of the regular commenters to adopt a picture of Minassian as his avatar.
But no one was quite so enthusiastic about the killings as the commenter calling himself BlkPillPres, who wondered if the killer had taken the advice he had given in a previous thread to use something other than guns in his “ER” — that is, Elliot Rodger-style — attack.
Many in the media and in politics are unwilling to label attacks driven by misogynistic ideology as terrorism — often declaring them to be simply the result of “mental illness,” as many did in the case of Elliot Rodger’s murders (ignoring his hundred page manifesto), and as the authorities are already doing in the Toronto attacks.
But misogyny is not mental illness; it’s hate. And what BlkPillPres is talking about here is essentially the dictionary definition of terrorism — “[t]he unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” The tactics he suggests are an explicit attempt to subject “normies” to “constant fear” — that is, terror — in all areas of their lives, in order to advance BlkPillPres’ goal of “black pilling” the world and intimidating those who criticize incels into silence.
Following his link back to the older thread, one quickly discovers that it is even more disturbing. In it, BlkPillPres sets out what he sees as the virtues of various terroristic strategies, from acid attacks to mass rape to vehicle attacks like the one we saw yesterday. (If you are feeling at all fragile you may wish to stop reading this post right here.)
Others in the thread suggests that this all sounds great to them, with one aiming some of his ire at the IncelTears subreddit, which is devoted to criticizing Incels on Reddit and elsewhere.
Other commenters offer their own even more horrifying ideas.
Like Ub2w, BlkPillPres is especially taken with the acid-in-the-face tactic.
“Kek.”
Sadly, as someone who has been writing about incels for several years now, none of this is surprising. Disturbing, yes, but not surprising. Incel is a hate movement, and it is long past time for it to be treated as such.
NOTE: The reaction amongst Reddit incels has been more measured; I may delve into that in a future post.
Aaaand there goes my day. How do these wannabe people even live im the same World as I do. How can you live in this beautiful, flawed world with its beautiful, flawed people and be like that. What has to go wrong to for someone to go “the worst thing that can possibly happen to anyone would be not getting their dick wet, no physical or emotional pain could be bigger”?
I’m angry. I’m unbelievably disgusted and sad and angry and still. Still I would not talk to them like they talk about women. And yet in their eyes I’m wrong. I want to say “kill them all”, but echoing that thought is immediately “human beings, killing them doesn’t solve anything, hurts people, is wrong and bad and nobody deserves it”. And yet, in their narrative I’m the bad person.
Just. Just fucking grow a soul and some empathy, you stumped wannabe humans.
@ Anne
Personally I think it’s very on topic because it’s a perfect illustration of misogyny as ideology.
Facebook confirmed the screenshot was legit. Dude is an incel.
What can we do about this? I’m tired of just complaining about the way everyone refused to label misogynistic terrorism what it is. I just sent a tweet to Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle when they said on their show that we don’t know the motive. But considering I have no social media influence whatsoever, it’s not worth anything really. Anyone have any ideas?
Catherine McDonald from Global News Toronto says Facebook has confirmed the incel post was genuine.
I understand completely about everyone’s feelings here even the thoughts of killing them, me personally I wish we can just gather all incels and everyone like them to some island with no people, animals, Internet access or no way of escaping and just leave them there.
What we can do is educate people around us about misoygny as much as possible and call them out on it, sign petitions, volunteer, etc. I’m afraid I don’t know exactly what to do either except don’t give up and don’t stop talking about it.
Okay, its safe to say that these guys are terrorists, or at the very least terrorist enablers! Each and everyone of them ought to be ashamed at themselves.
I’m surprised Marc Lepine hasn’t been mentioned, but then I suspect these guys have very little sense of history among all their other lackings.
How can that one incel call himself KiryuKazuma? That’s a fictional character who is nurturing and kind, and goes out of his way to never kill anyone when he uses violence. How could he miss the point so much?
Also, ya know, this whole thing is a tragedy and the incel movement is a terrorist ideology, but I feel like other posters have that covered.
@ Valentin thanks. These people are scum.
The part that really gets me is they’re expecting people’s friends and family to straight-up abandon them if they were disfigured, as if an attractuve appearance is all that holds together the entirety of human relationships.
Okay, I’m sorry, but is there any bloody app I can use to keep my goddamned phone from being hijacked when visiting WHTM? I just installed Adblock for Android, and it did nothing. This is becoming fucking untenable.
It happens when I come here from Twitter. It happens when I come here directly. It happens multiple times in a row, using different “companies” with the givaways…Walmart, FB, YouTube, Samsung…I’m beyond tired of it at this point.
I love this site, but I can’t keep wasting a half hour at a time trying to access one post.
Help.
@Talonknife
Yeah, that was so bizarre. What an odd thing to think. The only way I can make logical sense of how anyone could think that is that they assume disfigurement turns people into a puddle of angry, bitter self-pity with no redeeming qualities and further assume that everyone who loved them would abandon them, rather than support them, when they did.
@Peevee
I’m currently using Brave browser on my phone until the ad situation is sorted, and it’s working very well.
Tovius, thanks. I’ll give that a try.
@Starfury:
Why not? That’s what they’d do; heck, ‘turn[ing …] into a puddle of angry, bitter self-pity’ is what they’re already doing even without an outside cause of being disfigured.
Projection, at its core, is simply the failure of imagination and the resulting assumption that everybody else is as bad as you are.
Tovius, so far so good!
@jenora
Yeah, I was thinking they should try cultivating some redeeming qualities instead of projecting all the time.
PeeVee, I don’t often browse on mobile, but when I do, whatever the site, I use Firefox for Android with the uBlock Origin add-on. No problems with WHTM.
On-topic: so very very tired with this. Was mass Internet use a ghastly mistake?
@Moggie:
As I’ve noted before, the internet is great at community-building. (A lot of modern fandom wouldn’t really exist without the internet.) It just isn’t particularly picky about what types of communities get built.
@PeeVee
Glad I could help!
One thing I’ll never wrap my head around is how people can think and do such violent shit just because they think sex is the most important thing.
Yeah, I know it’s “attached” to “status” and entitlement and all sorts of shit but I still can’t.
This. So many times this. Just…. Wtf is wrong with them?
On the topic of disfigurement: that doesn’t really surprise me at all. I mean, it’s coming from people who believe they are alone and drydicked because they’re ugly.
Literally my first thought upon seeing the driver today was “but he isn’t ugly at all, why did he think he was?”
These shits are so devoid of compassion and empathy that they fail to take in account in their filthy little rape fantasies that the Chad boyfriends of the women these turds want to violate might actually take the side of their girlfriends. Because they actually, you know, might love them. That they’d feel anguish at their loved ones’ pain. Which I’m sure incels would consider a great bonus. However, they don’t seem to take into account that pain can transmute into rage, and punitive action of some kind is likely to happen in reaction.
Whatever that action is, I’m sure they would not like the results.
@Zaunfink
If they’re ugly anywhere, it’s most certainly on the inside. Plenty of plain or homely people get romance, but that’s because they don’t have suppurating boils of hatred, entitlement, and self pity for personalities.