[UPDATED with name of shooter]
By David Futrelle
Last night, a young man opened fire on people enjoying a night out in Toronto’s Greektown neighborhood. Numerous people were hit; two of his victims died — an 18-year-old woman and a 10-ear-old girl.
The shooter, identified as 29-year-old Toronto resident Faisal Hussain, was found dead shortly after a gunfight with police; it’s not clear if he was killed by the police or if he took his own life.
As of yet, we don’t know the shooter’s motive, but given his choice of targets — people out socializing on a summer night in a neighborhood known for its many restaurants — it’s hard not to wonder if he was inspired by the incel van attack that killed ten pedestrians and injured many more on a busy street in Toronto in April.
On the Incels.me message board — where many have made heroes of incel mass killers like Elliot Rodger and the Toronto van killer — some of the regulars are openly celebrating the shooting, with some taking special pleasure in the death of the ten-year-old girl.
Someone called /pol/cel, with more than 1499 comments to his name on the site, kicked off the celebration by declaring how glad he was that the shooting took place in Toronto:
“IT” is a reference to the IncelTears subreddit. devoted to mocking incels.
After one commenter took offense at /pol/cel’s glee over the murders, prolific Incels.me commenter Getlooksordie took the discussion into an even darker direction:
And things got worse from there, with much of the rest of the discussion centered around the alleged crimes-against-inceldom committed by the murdered “8 year old girl” (who was actually ten).
Somehow the discussion managed to get even more grotesque.
While a few commenters pushed back against the celebration of the murders, or simply dismissed their comments as the work of “edge lords,” the regulars who weren’t giddily joking about the murdered ten-year-old were much more worked up about one commenter who referred to the shooting as taking place in “America.”
These are men who insist they are “involuntarily celibate” — yet who are choosing of their own volition to be such utterly reprehensible human beings that no decent person of any gender would want to have anything to do with them.
@ freemage
Oh I very much think they do fit the legal definition of terrorism.
My point was just that they’re not seen as being terrorists by the establishment because they’re not a threat to the the current power structure, but rather seek to preserve and reinforce it.
I’m just wondering when our lovely CONservative premier-elect, Doug Fucking Ford, is going to finally restore funding to the healthcare system in this province, and reopen all those mental hospitals that his CONservative predecessor, Mike Fucking Harris, cut back and closed down. Because one of those places might, at least, have kept this one guy off the streets, away from guns, and out of trouble.
Ain’t holding my breath for him to finally get a good idea in that flaxen head of his, though.
Alan: Ah, now I get you. Fair enough.
@Bina
Yeah, was kinda hoping the Liberals would do the thing I voted them into office to do to and undo all those Harris cuts. *sigh* Thanks, Dalton. Thanks Kathleen… really representing change there. Just paving the way for a Ford premiership.
@Freemage:
As I’ve said before, the Internet is great at joining fandoms and creating communities. It just doesn’t have a filter on what kinds of communities get created.
@Katamount:
That was the one thing I hated about the Tory-McGuinty election run: the end result was that the whole discussion the province needs to have about ‘why are we continuing to explicitly fund a separate Catholic school system’ got shoved off for another generation because it became toxic to talk about it again. I mostly blame McGuinty for that: Tory’s take was problematic (just see the ‘voucher’ system championed south of the border for why) but McGuinty could have used that as a springboard to talk about actual change rather than taking the low road the way he did.
I might have still considered voting for Tory if the local PC rep hadn’t been Lilyann Goldstein of the ‘Warning: a convicted gun and drug dealer has just been released into your neighbourhood!!’ fearmongering.
Tory plays the ‘sane conservative’, but as you say, he does way too much bothside-ism. He’s very much a ‘status quo’ person, which at least makes him a bit better than the ‘tear it all down because I don’t understand it’ approach of Ford.
I am still dismayed at the fact that somehow Doug Ford got more votes in the Toronto mayoral election than Olivia Chow, even after Rob Ford had been such a disaster.
A three year old was attacked in Worcester a couple of days ago by men who sprayed acid it his face. The EDL have not been linked to the attack even tho they were having a demo nearby. It’s ironic that these far right types who love calling LGBTQIA folk paedos and child molesters have no problem killing or maiming children on their own terms. Total hypocracy.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/24/fifth-man-arrested-worcester-acid-attack-three-year-old-boy
Hey, Mary, nice to see you back.
Has anyone noticed the bizarre maths the guy in the last image performed?
“Actually, she was 10, not 8. Maybe she didn’t look her age and the shooter mistook her for an *older* girl because of her sexualized appearance.”
This guy has some serious Benjamin Button back-asswards logic.
Hi Alan 🙂
I’ve just been talking to a friend of a friend on Facebook who refuses to answer my questions. He’s a libertarian capitalist who thinks all LGBTQIA people are child molesters, even tho I am asexual and not having sex with anyone. He has very pointed views about which things should be “illegal” from child sex dolls to paedophilia etc. He does not believe in paying tax and therefore does not believe in a state funded criminal justice system or police force. My argument was how does he expect to pass legislation against these things without a state funded judiciary or a government. He favours mob rule and pitchforks at dawn, asserting that men should have rights to protect their families. However, there will be no prisons, because nobody is paying for them, so I asked him if he thought G4S were doing an effective job. He concluded that they were rubbish.
I saw a nice response today to someone who was taking a libertarian view on health care. Their argument being they were forced to hand over cash to someone who wouldn’t pay for themselves.
It was basically a wonderful rant about ‘I resent paying my taxes just to put out fires in your house. You need to research some private fire brigades and do a contract with them you freeloader’.
(The actual tweet was more elegant)
The thing about criminal justice is interesting, as it basically boils down to the romantic idea of Romper Stomper style gangs of thugs patrolling the streets beating up people they don’t like. It is hypocritical of a libertarian talking about which things they would ‘make illegal’ when without laws, it just boils down to mob rule. That isn’t justice, it’s Deliverance.
I have fantasies of “saving” an Incel and this has “cured” me for a little while. I suspect that they suffer from some of the same problems I do, extreme social anxiety, maybe Autism. The difference being that the “Incels” participated in a hate cult for several years. I read the Vox article on incel support group, and even giving them a sympathetic look they represent young men who hit rock bottom and decided that they were more comfortable down there. They explicitly reject the idea of self improvement; they reject hope. The Vox article talks about people who try to reach out, but usually fail. It seems that they also reject hope for humanity and assume most people deserve to die. Reading about Incels have ruined “Doctor Horrible’s Sing Along Blog” because it proves that the super socially awkward to literal supervillain transformation is actually quite possible.
@MickLL: Women are capable of just the same amounts of evil as men. (And I say that as a woman.) The problem is with humanity, though we mustn’t forget how much capacity for goodness we also have.
@QuantumInc: I know you mean well, but let’s not try to diagnose people. I have high-functioning autism, and I’m not an incel or wishing death on children. People are perfectly capable of being horrible without having a mental disorder.
@Jenora Feuer
Yeah, I really hoped for better from Olivia Chow’s campaign. But she had to overcome not only in-your-face racism and sexism, but I also think there was a bit of a language barrier in terms of communicating her ideas effectively. And really, she needed to communicate that she was the alternative to the Ford bullshit rather than the squish. I voted for the squish because I made the mistake of voting my heart last time and we had a crack mayor to deal with as a result. I wasn’t going to cast a ballot unless there was a sure chance of victory.
*sigh* Tory needs some competition from the left. Badly.
I’m autistic with clinical depression and severe social anxiety, and there was a period in college where I could have gone the incel route if I had been exposed to them instead of to feminism.
I don’t know if their echo-chamber would have been able to overcome my compassion, but I was feeling a lot of entitlement and resentment that they would have cheerfully reinforced. Probably not to the extent of celebrating violence as they do, but possibly enough to give me a misogynistic worldview of aggrieved entitlement.
Alan: Funny thing; there’s a county out there (probably many, actually, but this is the one that made the news) where you actually do have to contract with the fire department–you can choose to forgo paying your taxes to them, and make your own arrangements, or even just decide to live at risk.
Well, some yahoo opted not to pay the fee, and sure enough, his property caught fire. The fire brigade showed up, but refused to lift a finger, even when he offered to pay that month’s fee (since, of course, the whole point of it is that they need to be funded ahead of time–he would’ve needed to be able to pay, on the spot, the full arrears, including interest, since he stopped making payments if he wanted to make up for the deficit his selfishness had cost them). The fire department only acted once the fire itself crossed the property line and burnt some of the farmland next door (which HAD paid the fee).
Of course, the guy whose property got burnt wound up suing the fire department for letting it get that far, and probably his neighbor as well; I never did learn how the thing turned out.
********
Funny thing about health-care in the U.S. (especially pre-Obamacare) is that it pretty much has been an example of the worst sort of Soviet-style communism for a lot of people, because instead of going to relatively affordable and effective preventative care, they have to go to the ER (which is barred by law from kicking them out until they’ve been treated), but only once they get sick enough they have no choice. And then, of course, they can’t pay, so the hospital has to jack up everyone else’s bill to cover the deficit. So we end up with people getting the worst care, at the highest price, and most of the rest of us paying the bill.
*********
I was another college kid who could’ve been lured into some level of incel mindset. And yeah, not autistic, just socially awkward and frustrated. I was saved, not only by the lack of an ‘incel support network’, but also because I actually had women friends, for whom I would never have thought to wish bad things upon just because they had no interest in being my bed-mates–and I would’ve been appalled by any suggestion that that was somehow something I should have considered. The fringe-dwellers in these communities (the ones who haven’t fully committed yet to a life of misogyny) would really benefit from developing some hobbies that get them out in the world–not as an effort to get a date, but just to get to know other human beings in the real world. But that takes both effort and the risk of rejection, and it seems easier and safer to huddle online with your circle of people who all tell you it’s not your fault.
Wow, that much is certain!
@ freemage
The early fire brigades in London and other big cities were often private. They were provided by insurance companies. You still see badges on some buildings that were there so the fire company knew whether it was one of theirs or not.
To make matters even more interesting, the insurance companies tendered out the work to private companies and whoever put out the fire got the payment. So rival companies would sometimes turn up at the same fire, and get into big fights over who was going to put it out.
Alan: I can’t help but wonder how often some enterprising fireman got the brilliant idea to drum up a little business….
@Katamount:
“TIFF”?
@Alan and Freemage: I haven’t seen enough solid evidence to absolutely convince me, but I’ve read stories of American private firefighting companies having such bitter and violent rivalries that they ended up affiliated with actual street gangs, actively preventing each other from access hydrants, and even lighting fires as a way of drawing their enemies out for a rumble.
Wait a minute, just a few posts back, weren’t the incels pissing and moaning about women aborting their future girlfriends? And now, they’re pleased an 8 year old girl was killed? Who maybe, possibly, had she lived, un-incelled someone?
@Surplus to Requirements:
TIFF == Toronto International Film Festival. It’s one of the biggest film festivals in the world these days; it may not have quite the public name recognition of Cannes, but it’s one of the ones the industry pays serious attention to.
@Katamount:
Yeah. Yet one of many things that makes me wish Jack Layton was still alive. He had a way with people.
@Freemage: That sounds even worse than where I live. There’s no municipal garbage pickup in my rural county. Residents can buy a bag at a local convenience store with a contractor’s name on it, put their garbage in it, and the contractor will pick it up. In practice, this means illegal dumping throughout the county…the whole place is potentially one big trash heap.
It’s a shame to see such beautiful terrain marred in this way. All so as not to pay a tax.
Welcome to Galt’s Gulch, a place of abundance* for all!
* as long as what you’re looking for is a negative externality.