By David Futrelle
Australians learned a bit more today about the motivations of Michael James Holt, a wannabe mass killer who appeared in a New South Wales court for a sentencing hearing after pleading guilty to an assortment of weapons charges. Holt, a Hitler-loving white supremacist obsessed with guns, admitted to planning a mass shooting at an Australian mall.
One of the sources of Holt’s murderous rage? According to a text message from Holt that was read aloud in court today, he was angry that he couldn’t get a date.
“Gonna have to just start killing people if I don’t get laid soon,” Holt wrote. And he apparently meant that quite literally. In another message, he declared that “my hate increases every day, my anger exponentially so.”
It would be nice if we could dismiss Holt as little more than a weird aberration — an neo-Nazified Australian wannabe version of Elliot Rodger, the self-pitying misogynist who murdered six people in Isla Vista California in 2014 as an act of symbolic “retribution” against the women of the world for not spontaneously offering him sex.
But unfortunately, as long-time readers of this blog know well, there’s an entire movement of men out there who think like Holt and Rodger — men who lash out at the world because they feel that women are unfairly denying them sex. In online forums like the Incels subreddit, these self-professed “involuntary celibates” nurture their resentment against women and stoke one another’s rage.
More than a few incels have embraced “Saint” Elliot Rodger as an incel martyr — thought some don’t think he killed enough people to be a true hero — and it’s probably only a matter of time until they embrace Holt as one of them as well. Indeed, a handful of Reddit incels already have.
For more on Incels, check out my numerous posts on the subject in the We Hunted the Mammoth archives. I’ve also written more than a few posts on Elliot Rodger and incels’ posthumous embrace of “Saint Elliot.”
H/T — Raw Story
That’s a bit hyperbolic. You made some assertions, people gently pointed out where they were incorrect, and no one made any assumptions about your intentions or attached you personally.
No, it isn’t enough to have your heart in the right place. Many, many people who have their hearts in the right place do a ton of damage. It’s good to have your heart in the right place, and if your heart truly is in the right place, then once the discomfort of being corrected on some details of your writing has passed, maybe you’ll read up some on why the “again” in MAGA is suuuper problematic or how the founding fathers didn’t actually want equality or why it’s bad to make up a new word for another group of people because of a specific word some of them like to use being possibly confusing.
I also want to make it clear that you weren’t called out because anyone has any beef with you (trust me, the regulars here don’t hold back if they have a beef) or as any kind of public shaming or punishment or anything of that nature. We call out problematic statements here because words matter. They matter a lot. There are these poisonous ideas out there that simply can’t be tolerated any longer. Ideas like the founding fathers being these great egalitarians who valued liberty and democracy for everyone. Those ideas are false and are routinely used to harm people. We can’t just sit by when someone makes comments like that without saying something. If we don’t say something, we’re implicitly accepting it. You were called out in an effort to educate you and any lurkers reading this thread. It’s not personal and it’s meant to help you grow as a person.
Personally, I wouldn’t wish these assholes on a sex worker. Sex workers are not really protected, and it would be very dangerous for them to meet with someone like this asshole. He’s expressed a desire to kill people, and I wouldn’t leave him alone with someone who he could murder and potentially get off for doing it.
Sex workers won’t “cure” them of their desire to be assholes. Neither will sex with just a random woman. Being “incel” is just an excuse for their misogyny. If they did manage to get laid, as another commenter pointed out, it wouldn’t make them not hate women, they’d just find some other shit about women to complain about.
People have tried going to incel havens like r/incel and give them advice on how to improve their lives, and how to stop being miserable. You know what they were met with? Anger. Mistrust. Accusations of wanting to ruin their lives.
They don’t give a shit about “improving” anything, they just want to be miserable and are angry that they can’t drag everyone else into it to make them as miserable, if not more miserable than they are.
Incels don’t want merely sex. They can get orgasms from their hands. What they want is to dominate women, which they have convinced themselves is the only way to obtain life affirmation. They don’t want to rent a woman’s attention. They want women to freely shower them with adulation just for their being male.
Their problem is not a lack of orgasms, but a feeling of entitlement to women. This is the same problem that other manosphereans have, incidentally. It just manifests differently in different groups. No sex worker can cure that.
Aaand my comment’s gone. Whatever… ?
@Axe
That’s weird because I saw it when it was posted.
Plus, incels quite often say that they won’t have sex with any woman who isn’t young, a virgin, and conventionally attractive. Women who’ve had sex are sluts or “roasties.” Young virgins are okay, but older virgins must either be ugly, have something wrong with them, or are just really mean to be turning down offers for sex. And you can’t possibly expect an incel, no matter how repugnant his personality is, no matter how neglectful he is of basic hygiene, etc to lower himself by having sex with less than an 8/10. Sex workers are no good because there is no validation to be gained by paying for sex. They don’t realize that sex workers can and do turn down client and view them as a sure thing.
Incels will tell you that it’s impossible for them to have sex, but that’s not true. What they mean is that one of the very women who meets their picky standards isn’t throwing themselves at them without them having to do any work on their appearance or social skills.
@ Axe, both of them are still there as far as I just checked – or was there a third?
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2017/08/25/incel-logic-australian-neo-nazi-planned-mass-shooting-if-i-dont-get-laid-soon/comment-page-1/#comment-1603740
Applause, BTW.
@Croquembouche
There was another one that was at the top of this page which started out addressed to me and then was addressed to SpukiKitty.
The founders who wrote the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were important Enlightenment-era intellectuals, and definitely aren’t legitimate precursors to the modern far right. But they didn’t support social egalitarianism and it’s dishonest to pretend that they did if you should know better.
Pretending that people like Thomas Jefferson were social egalitarians has been used to build left-right coalitions based on single issues. While those coalitions might be good or bad on a case-by-case basis (like leftists and fundamentalist Christians both want harsher penalties for child molesters), it’s almost always bad to pretend that the left and right have more in common with each other than they really do. Their end goals for society and philosophies of civil rights and freedom are fundamentally different. Pretending that right-wing definitions of those terms are cool with the left as an “alternative viewpoint” harms progressive social movements.
It’s a bit like “All you lefties are against government censorship, what about supporting mah freeze peach?” (says person who hasn’t been prosecuted by the government for his speech)
@Croquembouche
Yeah, there was a 3rd yelling at Spuki for obvs reasons. It showed up fine, then disappeared after a while. I dunno why…
Thanks, buddy! ❤
Christ Hall says:
Because guys like that don’t actually want sex as reasonable people see it. They want to penis-claim a woman (or girl) whose attractiveness and sexual purity rate high enough to give them bragging rights among their peers.
Agreed.
I will and I have a lot to unlearn. Thank you.
You’re definitely right and I understand, now.
And I can agree; The best a white person can do is call out their white peers when they are being bigoted jerks.
I know an ally should not speak for the oppressed group in a big leading way and it’s a huge exercise in sanctimonious “Mighty Whitey” bullcrap and that, too, is bigoted and part of the problem. “Ally” means “A sympathetic party who helps on the sidelines and is sympathetic to the cause”.
True. Definitely. Indeed as it’s said, “The road to Hell is often paved with good intentions”. No doubt I am aware that the Founders were also bigots and many kept slaves. I also realize that I can’t reclaim “MAGA” and “Liberalize it” like other phrases because America was NEVER great for a lot of people so it can’t be “Great Again“, making the true meaning of “MAGA” simply a Dog Whistle of “Make America White Again”.
Concerning “MAGA”, when I wanted to reclaim it for the Left (‘Make America Truly Great Again) would see the “Again” as meaning “Before the Unions were busted, when regulations were robust, the Fat Cats held accountable and ‘Reaganomics’ wasn’t a thing and an average Joe or Jane could get a great-paying job straight out of High School with plenty of benefits and make that job a lifelong career”.
But now I realize that the “Again” is still the problem even in that regard….because things were still horrible for people who weren’t white. Even when things were better on the economic front, non-whites still had to put up with the same old bigoted crap.
You do have a point and I am aware, now that The Founders were not Egalitarians and definitely favored white land-owners. The may have been Progressive in a “Fair For It’s Day” sort of way but they would be seen as retrograde these days.
My thinking was that, The Constitution was a “Living Document” and that it can be amended to reflect a more Egalitarian view and that the ideals of the documents for the most part could be separated from the men who wrote it.
Also; Re-framing the Constitution and the Founders as a “Progressive” thing has been a major “weapon” in the fight against the Far-Right and it works. To see the full truth of what the document or Founders really were like, said or meant means that Progressives have no real leg to stand on and everything we were taught was a lie. The very FOUNDATIONS of this nation we’re trying to save becomes a sham not worthy of saving….And that’s terrifying!
….that’s what was REALLY going through my mind when I wrote that stuff earlier.
However; American Progressives use the rhetoric of “American Freedom”, “Lady Liberty”, “Liberty and Justice for All” and cherry-pick all the genuinely good pro-egalitarian-ish stuff in the Founding Documents and the Founder’s Words and focus on that….The “Spirit”, not the “Letter”. We know the Founders were “Enlightenment Thinkers” and were “Progressive” for their time period and that….Politically….The Constitution is for the most part, Neutral (Neither Right or Left).
To the American Progressive, it’s VITAL to re-frame everything in “Progressive” terms and to use The Founder’s words and laws against the Far-Right has been an important asset and we feel we can undo all the bigoted stuff that built this country, replace “White Privilege” with “Rights for All”. And take all the “America The Free” stuff at face value.
This was my thinking. This is why I freaked out. It’s not just about my White Privilege but about doubting everything I knew and why I felt I had to hold on to the mythology of “America”. The American Left NEEDS that mythology to thrive and re-frame things so the United States can truly be a free, open, egalitarian nation FOR ALL and not just white guys.
I don’t know if I should reject the entire basis and foundation of my country as total crapola or if the above reasoning is all garbage but I am willing to reconsider things and undo White Privilege.
With this in mind; I thank all of you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you, everyone. I’m willing to learn and rethink things. Thank you.
@SpukiKitty
Thank you for coming back and listening to what we said and admitting where you were wrong. That’s really difficult to do. I’m glad you’re willing to learn. 🙂
Thank you.
I do have a question though. How do I handle this “America” thing? Should I regard it as a huge sham or should I still hold on to my assumptions to a degree? Is it okay to still be Pro-USA and following the good bits while hating the bad bits and apply the good bits to everyone?
Again what I explained, here….
….Can I still be a “Good American”, be active in politics/voting, enjoy the 4th of July, think Lady Liberty is cool….and see all that stuff as representing EVERYONE in a Liberal Progressive way?
I can’t handle a political Existential crisis. The Founders may have been bigots but the Constitution IS a “Living Document” and there is at least a nod to Progressive ideals.
@SpukiKitty
There are two issues about the “white guilt” thing. The first is that people of color don’t owe you a “seal of approval” service so that they know you’re okay (though that’s true of anyone). It sucks that humans are complex and we all have trust issues, but you learn to live with it. The second is that, at least in most cases, you should stand back and listen before you voice disagreement with a marginalized person’s ideology or tactics unless they’re attacking or promoting prejudice against another marginalized group. You might be right about everything, but it might be harmful to voice criticisms in certain circumstances without listening to what someone has to say and reflecting first.
Just take a chill pill. Try to be a good person. Feeling guilty about your privilege usually isn’t productive.
Okay. I’ll ponder everything you’ve stated and act on it.
But how do I approach this “America” stuff?
Don’t worry about it. Just educate yourself.
I don’t see any problem with celebrating 4th of July, etc. But you should be aware of people who disagree and decide for yourself, just remember that other people (in general, not just marginalized people) don’t owe us some magical “seal of approval.”
Fair enough. Thanks.
Everything you described there is just white guilt. Like I said before, white guilt only serves to make white people feel better. It doesn’t improve the lives of non-white people.
Instead of feeling weird about “America” as a mythology, it would be constructive for you to recognize where the reality falls short of the myth, and work toward rectifying that gap. You don’t have to tackle the entire problem. You could choose an issue and make that your pet problem, toward which you direct your activism.
But note: you don’t have to actually work toward racism as a problem to be a good person. There are plenty of problems with the US and racism is just one big one. Every form of inequality deserves attention and there are enough of them to go around to keep all progressives busy. Racism affects everything else, because it is so ingrained in the fabric of American society, but you can focus on something else. You need to be aware of the way racism affects your non-racism problem, and you need to not swoop in as a white savior to rescue the poor non-white people who suffer from your pet problem, but you don’t need to choose racism specifically as your pet problem to be progressive.
A. Noyd nails it.
“Because guys like that don’t actually want sex as reasonable people see it. They want to penis-claim a woman (or girl) whose attractiveness and sexual purity rate high enough to give them bragging rights among their peers.”.
They are homosocial, they hate women, for them masculinity is a performance art to gain noddy points from other men. And they only want a ‘sexy girlfriend’ to (a) to show off to other men and (b) not to be thought of as gay.
I’d love to see a study on their (and MRAs, MTGOWs, etc) backgrounds. I have a suspicion that some of them (at least) were brought up by very anti sex parents (perhaps religious), who thought that teaching their kids that the other gender was ‘horrible’ (dirty, etc) would discourage them from having sex.
JS
However, the real danger for people benefiting from a pardon is that they no longer have any 5th amendment protection or rights in relation to that matter. This is why Trumpelthinskin can’t (or shouldn’t) hand out pre-emptive pardons to all his family and friends and employees (and gardeners, contractors or waiters who might have overheard conversations) like candy to kids.
Once they’ve been pardoned, they have no personal “need” for 5th amendment protection. They would be obliged to answer, in full, any and all questions put to them by the FBI, congressional committees or any civil or criminal court of law or deposition in relation to a proceeding. Which could turn out problematic for the Mango Mussolini.
Hey that’s fine. I can work with that. I can still embrace “America The Ideal” (Freedom, Equality, Opportunity and Justice for All!), reject “America the Reality” (Bigotry! Racism! Sexism! Injustice! Imperialism, etc.) and work to make the Ideal the new Reality.
I’m aware that racism (they need to invent a better term) is just one of many things to challenge and the best way for a white person to be an ally is to take the “back seat” approach. I’ll lent my support but I’ll let the members of the non-privileged group have most of the say.
Meanwhile; If fellow whites are being bigoted asshats….I’ll call them out on it as a fellow white person.
OFF TOPIC AND ABOUT THE ABOVE ARTICLE: I’m glad they caught this guy before he could use other folks a shooting gallery!
Why?
If the term makes you uncomfortable for some reason, you can sub in white supremacy, but white supremacy alone is not the whole story. If you get into the literature about racism, you’ll discover that the US is not merely white supremacist, but also anti-black. White people and white culture are consistently ranked highest by all racial groups, while black people and black culture are consistently ranked lowest. Yes, even black people themselves, in aggregate, prefer white neighbors over black neighbors. Focusing on “white supremacy” elides the anti-blackness component of American racism, and it’s a mistake to do that.
Racism may not be an ideal term, and it might be more effective to use other language to describe what you want to say. But it’s typically not appropriate or productive to say you disapprove of someone’s use of the term. You don’t need to agree with it, you just should understand why people choose to use language in a specific way.
You don’t have to agree with someone’s tactics or use of language. But, in many cases, you’re causing a great deal of harm to people if you start voicing every disagreeing thought that comes into your head publicly without taking the time to learn from people who have a different experience of the world than you. It’s especially important to stand back if you think someone’s tone or language is too harsh. Again, you don’t have to agree, but criticizing someone’s tone can give horrible people a huge amount of ammunition and it’s shaming people for speaking against injustice.