UPDATE: The CBC has confirmed with Facebook that Minassian’s post declaring himself an incel and hailing Elliot Rodger is real.
By David Futrelle
Earlier today, a van plowed into a crowd of pedestrians in Toronto, killing ten before speeding off; all indications are that it was a deliberate attack. Police have arrested 25-year-old Alek Minassian, the man they say was the driver.
Now both CBC and NBC news are suggesting that Minassian may have been inspired by Elliot Rodger, who murdered six people in Isla Vista California in 2014 in what he saw as an act of “retribution” against young women for their unwillingness to have sex with him. As readers of this blog know well, “Saint Elliot” has since been hailed as a hero by many of the internet’s self-described incels, or involuntary celibates.
Not long after Minassian’s name was made public, a screenshot of an alleged Facebook post by Minassian began circulating online:
The text:
Private (Recruit) Minassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt. 4chan please. C23249161. The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!
On the face of it, this screenshot looks sketchy as hell, very much like a 4chan hoax.
But several journalists have found what appears to be evidence that it was posted around the time of the attack, several hours BEFORE Minassian’s name was released to the public.
Per @mattbraga, the post is stamped 1:27 EDT. According to Chief Saunders, the first 911 call came in at "approximately" 1:26. pic.twitter.com/dHaoJDvCJP
— Jonathan Goldsbie (@goldsbie) April 24, 2018
We’ve just obtained this Facebook post from the accused Alek Minassian, suspected in the #yongeandfinch mass casualty. Posted early this afternoon. FYI Incel=involuntarily celibate. Elliot Rodger killed 6 ppl at UCSB in 2014 before killing himself @globalnewsto pic.twitter.com/W84xt3D85I
— Catherine McDonald (@cmcdonaldglobal) April 23, 2018
NBC is also reporting the possible incel connection, and its sources appear to be law enforcement officials, not the screenshot.
NBC News: Multiple law enforcement officials in Canada and the U.S. say the preliminary theory is that Minassian may have had mental health issues and had an online discussion about Eliot Rodger who went on a rampage at UC Santa Barbara. https://t.co/Zy5XybwFxS
— Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) April 23, 2018
The reporting is fairly specific that this is what Canadian and U.S. law enforcement officials have told us. Not based on real or fake postings we've seen online.
— Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) April 23, 2018
If true, it looks as though Minassian was clearly inspired by incel ideology and likely thought of himself as an incel.
If so, it would be dishonest and dangerous to dismiss this as a “mental health” issue. Incel is a poisonous and hateful ideology, not a form of mental illness, and killings carried out in its name should be considered deliberate terrorism just as ISIS bombings or KKK lynchings are. Misogyny is hate, just as racism and religious intolerance are.
I’ll try to update this post as we learn more. But I would not be surprised in the slightest if Minassian is an incel.
As I’ve been saying for some time, the incel movement is a real danger; it appeals to young men consumed by bitterness who don’t think they have much to lose. And instead of helping them solve their problems it radicalizes them and ratchets up both their bitterness and their “nothing to live for” nihilism. It’s a movement that idolizes mass killers and that has only slightly ironically heralded Elliot Rodger as its patron “saint.”
With all of its talk of Chads and Staceys, the incel movement often seems more ridiculous than dangerous, but the plain fact is that terrorists are often motivated by ideologies that most other people would consider ridiculous. Things that seem ridiculous can also be very dangerous.
I don’t know if Minassian is an incel, but I know, as I have been saying for some time, there will be more incel killings. The incel movement is just that poisonous.
Feel free to post additional info you may run across in the comments below.
I honestly think that it’s time for the FBI and equivalent agencies in other countries to subpoena the IP addresses of everyone on incel sites that has praised Elliot Rodger as a hero or at least everyone who has expressed a desire to join the incel rebellion or encouraged others to do so.
I’m also really glad that Feminist Guy is banned and can’t say his bullshit here.
I can’t even get to the possible incel bit just yet. I’m still too furious: all day, people with massive followings and platforms, like Paul Joseph Watson, have been yelling on Twitter that this was another Muslim attack (they don’t even bother saying ‘ISIS’; just ‘Muslim’).
None of these scum even paused for a second to check, or to wait. While we’re talking domestic terrorism and hate here, let’s throw in these people, for how they’ve further endangered Muslims, and anyone who “looks Muslim”.
I’ll get mad about the incel thing, too. I have plenty of mad to go around.
I agree with weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee. They need to check into these sites and people; the misogyny, white supremacy, etc terrorism has gone on long enough.
The Toronto police chief praised the arresting cop, and said “officers here are taught to use as little force as possible in any given situation”. American cops, take note.
Thanks David, as always, for pushing back hard on the “mental illness” tripe.
If I have multiple, similar comments that show up belatedly, sorry about that, and please feel free to delete the duplicates. I was getting “duplicate comment detected” from the first time I tried to post, for some reason.
My best wishes to everyone in Canada.
I was chatting to an Ontarian when it happened, and we were seeing the news stories come in. She was utterly shaken, and I don’t blame her.
Upon reflection, I think incel terrorism is something that our society finds very difficult to parse, given our lax attitudes towards straight white men. I expect that people are going to fall back on the “individual bad actors” motifs rather than seeing this as the broader social problem that it is. Anything else would require questioning too many cultural assumptions.
Someone linked to:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Love-shy.com
It quotes some of the nastier things incels have said, including:
This is remarkable. The incels themselves admit that events like their van attack are terrorism, and still the MSM, law enforcement, and governments stick to the “lone wolf, mentally ill” narrative. That’s not unlike acquitting a killer who made a spontaneous confession! It proves that the refusal on the part of the above organizations to admit that this shit is terrorism is politically motivated, rather than out of ignorance. 3 minutes of research would have fixed it if it was ignorance. Any ignorance they have is motivated ignorance.
And that, in my view, makes them complicit. Just as they are complicit with giving white supremacists license to operate, and giving corporate fatcats and privatizeers license to operate.
This.
I think at least some of the motivated ignorance comes from the fact that confronting it would require a very large paradigm shift on the part of the authorities, and would require them to utterly change the way they approach a lot of things. Rather than do this, they’re willing to accept a certain number of “unforeseeable, tragic, unconnected incidents” every so often.
Fuckers. Self-interested, complacent fuckers.
Our legal nerds: what’s the term for that situation where a judge knowingly hands down an obviously wrong verdict, because to do otherwise would set a precedent that would require too many powerful people to change how they do things?
Tuesday.
OT, but:
https://medium.com/@Amy_Siskind/week-75-experts-in-authoritarianism-advise-to-keep-a-list-of-things-subtly-changing-around-you-so-ac41bda4c55d
No warrant. Did not identify themselves properly. Seized a documented immigrant.
Usually a comparison of cops to Gestapo or other references to Nazi Germany are clear hyperbole. I don’t think that would be the case here. If neither documented status nor the Fourth Amendment can now protect someone of Hispanic heritage from being arbitrarily detained and herded into one of Arpaio’s camps or some similar facility, then it has actually got that bad.
It’s getting really scary out there. 🙁
@Moggie: unfortunately this is not necessarily representative of the Toronto police. They have a poor record when it comes to peaceful apprehension of people with mental health issues.
Note: not trying to pin yesterday’s incident on “mental health issues”. Just noting that this is a domain the Toronto police have tended to badly.
First my condelence to the victims and everyone who is near them.
Ever idology that dehumanizes people and is okay with murdering is evil.
Probs to the police and the media beeing careful with the motives of the perpatrator here.
Yes groups like the incels are dangerous, unfortunatly internetgroups are not as easy identified as oflinegroups.
The reluctance to call terrorism (when white and non-Muslim people do it) what it is in favor of throwing mentally ill people under the bus, just dismissing it like it’s a tragic natural event like sudden avalanche no one could have foreseen or prevented, frustrates me to no end.
An answer to Jules post, but only tangently.
A masskilling is defenitly an act of terror.
I don’t care that much if you call somethink massmurder or terrorism, but yeah the only difference is that the culprit is white and not motivated by religion.
Trowing mentally ill people under the buss: Remindes me of our nice new baverian governeuer (google tell me to translate it like that) who wanted to make a new law to defend against the “danger of mental ill persons”. That got him not the eco he wanted. Together with our right wing idiots who wanted to know if the imigrants towards Germany have more handicapted people (because incest that was really the reason they gave) assholes are very active.
In a way, those acts of terror are very hard to prevent. Everyone can get a car. Finding somethink in the internet is harder before the fact and the oficals (from what I know of my homecountry) have not the best equipment to deal with cybercriminals.
The canadian police seems to be aware of the danger the incels posses now, which makes further crimes less likly.
I don’t think that we can exspect the police to catch those guys before the murder, so yes the crimes won’t all be prevented, but nope they are not an act of nature and there can be somethink done. (And the text if real, wouldn’t have rased flags I am afraid.
Okay, now that I’ve had time to take this in, vented on Twitter a bit, and the Leafs have forced Game 7, I can talk on this.
I’ll start by saying Jenora’s absolutely right in the previous thread about the nature of that particular street. Yonge Street, for all intents and purposes, is the main artery of the city, stretching from the waterfront of Lake Ontario past the northern border of Steeles Avenue and into York Region, which encompasses the northern part of the Greater Toronto Area, such as Markham, Thornhill and Richmond Hill (which is where this perp was from, apparently). As a result, Yonge Street is always busy, but that particular section of town was the core of what used to be North York. Several people were hit just outside of Mel Lastman Square, which is where the North York Civic Centre is. In addition to the municipal buildings, such as Toronto District School Board building where my mother worked for years, the east side of that stretch of Yonge contains the Empress Walk shopping mall. As Jenora said, there’s a lot of Iranian, Chinese and Korean residences and businesses in the Willowdale neighbourhood.
The trip home yesterday from where I work in the eastern part of North York was a nightmare, but the minute I got home, I jumped on Twitter to find out what I could, and already the usual suspects were pulling “he’s been described as ‘Middle Eastern'” out of their asses before the guy was even identified. Again, this might be a local pride thing of mine, but there are few things that grind my gears more than some know-nothing idiot from America or the UK using my city as a prop for hate, or worse, talking smack about our diverse population as if they know the place. There’s a reason Toronto’s motto is “Diversity Our Strength”. These people don’t know Toronto. They don’t care about Toronto. They just want a repeat of Nice or London that they can hang around the necks of the browns.
Needless to say, I was in fight mode on Twitter a bit. The racists really came out of the woodwork to gnaw on my city’s grieving heart and it was too much for me. Had to take a gaming break and go to bed early.
As for what we’ve learned about this guy, it’s consistent with what I suspected based on his stand-off with police. The guy was clearly trying to do a suicide by cop kinda thing (much like it appears Alexandre Bissonnette was trying to do), and I’ll tell you, if this guy was motivated by some kind of radical interpretation of Islam and was intent on taking out non-Muslims, Willowdale is a strange place to do it. There are plenty of busy stretches of road in Toronto whiter than north Yonge Street that he could have chosen if that was the motivating factor (see why knowledge of the city is important, Twitter racists?).
Finally, for those praising the Toronto Police Service for their handling of the crisis… yes, those officers in particular should be commended for their apprehension of the suspect. The Toronto Police Service as a whole still has a lot to answer for regarding their handling of the Bruce McArthur case (eighth victim IDed just a week ago), so let’s keep a little perspective here.
So that’s my piece. I’m sure the other Toronto Mammotheers like Tim Guegan and Jenora Feuer have more to add, but I wanted to get my thoughts gathered in one place.
Toronto’s a resilient city and we’ll mourn the dead, nurse the injured, comfort the grieving and emerge from tragedy as a united people. We always do.
Actually I’m in Saskatoon. The farthest east I’ve been is Winnipeg, and that was a very long time ago.
CBC says that Facebook has confirmed that the posts were real https://twitter.com/CBCAlerts/status/988786051924791296
My mistake, Tim. But for what it’s worth, you’re an honourary Torontonian in my book. 🙂
Political cowardice?
@Katamount
Oh, you navel-gazing Torontonian you. :p Don’t say that too loudly, it might not be a compliment. You’ve got to remember that after hockey, hating Toronto is the national sport.
Except, of course, for right now.
Yeah, it’ll be nice to get back to that sense of normalcy….
.
Oops I was editing my comment and somewhow deleted it instead of posting it.
I called Toronto home for almost a decade. I lived on Yonge street. I loved the city. I loved the people and the energy. It’s hard to see a place that you love, a place that was familiar now a crime scene. Now the site for one of the worst mass killings on Canadian soil. I am so very brokenhearted for the families of the victims