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Why it’s a good thing that the Air Force gave a briefing on the dangers of incel terrorism

Not a real picture of the briefing

By David Futrelle

Hearing the news that Air Force personnel at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland were recently given a briefing on the threat posed by the incel movement — complete with slides featuring incel obsessions Becky and Stacy — some reacted with predictable jokes.

“You never know when the Air Force will need to bomb the Incel State,” author and ex-Daily Caller journalist Scott Greer joked on Twitter.

“These guys fly planes?” asked another Twitterer. “I’m concerned. You should only let smart people do that.”

So far, details on the briefing are a little scanty. According to Task & Purpose, a site reporting on military and veterans’ issues,

At least one Air Force base is on the lookout for a sinister new threat: angry men who can’t get laid.

Personnel at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland were recently treated to a threat brief regarding an “increase in nationwide activity” by self-described “incels,” members of an online subculture of “involuntary celibacy” who adopt an ideology of misogyny, mistrust of women, and violence in response to their failed attempts at romantic relationships.

The brief was first made public via a screenshot posted to the popular Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook page on Tuesday. An Air Force spokesman confirmed the authenticity of the screenshot to Task & Purpose.

The screenshot in question showed a slide from the presentation featuring an interent-famous incel meme starring supposed female archetypes Becky and Stacey.

Obviously, the Air Force isn’t contemplating any air strikes on incel hideouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, or anywhere else.

The briefing seems to have been intended to warn about the possible dangers of incel rampages by Air Force personnel themselves, many of whom obviously have access to considerable firepower and the training necessary to know how to use these weapons in the deadliest manner.

“The intent of the brief was to educate the Joint Base Andrews commanders on the behaviors and activities attributed to the group to safeguard our Airmen/installation,” an Air Force spokesperson told Task & Purpose.

It’s a good thing that the Air Force is taking incels seriously. We can’t dismiss the real threat of incels because of the absurdity of their beliefs. Terrorists and mass killers are often motivated by beliefs that the rest of us would consider ridiculous.

Son of Sam believed his neighbor’s dog was telling him to kill. Charles Manson ordered the killings at the Tate and LaBianca homes in hope of setting off a race war that would ultimately put him in charge of the world — basing his peculiar eschatology in part on secret messages he thought were hidden in Beatles lyrics. Compared to these two — and to many other mass killers — incels seem almost rational.

As for the memes? They’re a central part both of incel and alt-right culture; they radicalize angry young men in the same way that YouTube videos and books like the neo-Nazi bible The Turner Diaries do. These days, mass killers don’t just pen manifestos; they also leave a trail of memes. The Christchurch killer included references to memes in his manifesto; the Toronto van killer, an incel, left behind a short statement on social media referencing several popular incel memes.

“Indeed,” Task & Purpose notes,

the screenshot [of the Air Force briefing] appeared the day after Brian Isaac Clyde, a former Army infantryman who frequently posted memes that referenced the incel movement alongside anti-government conspiracies to his Facebook page, was shot by federal officers after he opened fire outside a Dallas, Texas federal building.

It’s not clear if Clyde considered himself an incel; his social media was overstuffed with all sorts of memes popular amongst alt-rightists and manospherans and right-wing conspiracy theorists generally.

We learned a long time ago that 4chan’s racist and anti-Semitic memes weren’t just “ironic.” Nor are threats of violence any less serious if they take the form of a meme. Incels make a lot of memes. They’ve also killed a lot of people. Everyone needs to take them seriously.

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Dalillama
Dalillama
5 years ago

Son of Sam believed his neighbor’s dog was telling him to kill.

He later admitted he’d made that up in hopes of copping an insanity plea and getting an easier sentence. He was just a murderous piece of shit.

Katamount
Katamount
5 years ago

…does this mean we’re going to start getting Chad Marine and Incel Air Force memes…?

Lainy
Lainy
5 years ago

I mean they teach this to the United state marine corps as well. That and about slave trafficking. Both amazed my fiance when he learned about it at 18.

Talonknife
Talonknife
5 years ago

He later admitted he’d made that up in hopes of copping an insanity plea and getting an easier sentence. He was just a murderous piece of shit.

Really? We covered him in my serial killers course in the fall semester and that never came up. Is there somewhere I can learn more about that?

Dalillama
Dalillama
5 years ago

This is apparently the interview where he said so, I can’t be bothered making an account atm.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/139894111

Dalillama
Dalillama
5 years ago

This should be the interview where he talks about it. I seem to’ve tripped a filter, or maybe just the usual gremlins:
https://www.newspapers.com/image/139894111

Kevin
Kevin
5 years ago

Well at least some of the powers – that – be are taking the threat seriously. And even the thought of a murderous incel getting hold of a civilian light aircraft is alarming. From my own experience being near a light aircraft accident caused by inept piloting was bad enough.

Castrating Harpy
Castrating Harpy
5 years ago

@Dalilama – If I learned anything from Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test, it’s that the kind of people who feign insanity to get away with murder are not entirely sane themselves.

kupo
kupo
5 years ago

@Talonknife, Dali

Murderpedia had the following to say about it:

In 1979, Robert Ressler, the FBI veteran, interviewed Berkowitz in Attica Prison three times. Berkowitz had been allowed to keep a scrapbook he had compiled of all the newspaper stories about the murders. He used these scrapbooks to keep his fantasies alive.

Ressler made it clear that he didn’t buy the demon dog theory one bit and eventually he was able to get the truth out of Berkowitz. The demon story was to protect him when and if he was caught so that he could try to convince the authorities he was insane. He admitted to Ressler “that his real reason for shooting women was out of resentment toward his own mother, and because of his inability to establish good relationships with women.” He would become sexually aroused in the stalking and shooting of women and would masturbate after it was over.

He also admitted to Ressler that stalking women had become a nightly adventure for him. If he didn’t find a victim, he would go back to the scenes of his earlier murders and try to recall them. “It was an erotic experience for him to see the remains of bloodstains on the ground, a police chalkmark or two: seated in his car, he would often contemplate these grisly mementos and masturbate.” So murderers do return to the scene of the crime, not out of guilt, but because they want to revive the memories of their crimes for sexual pleasure.

https://murderpedia.org/male.B/b/berkowitz.htm

Ohlmann
Ohlmann
5 years ago

Depend on what you call sane or insane. The usual problem arise that it’s the same term applied to any mental imbalance, and almost all people with mental troubles are actually inoffensive.

For murderers like that, what interest me is more if they intended to kill people. Quite often, the “sanity” of someone have little if anything to do with his crimes.

kupo
kupo
5 years ago

If I learned anything from Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test, it’s that the kind of people who feign insanity to get away with murder are not entirely sane themselves.

This is approximately the exact opposite of Catch-22’s take on the matter.

But seriously, the dude enjoyed killing women. It wasn’t because he didn’t understand what he was doing. He didn’t think a dog was demonic and compelling him to kill. He didn’t misunderstand the reality of the situation he was in and kill those women as a result of a misunderstanding. He was just a really terrible person and he did what he wanted and didn’t care who he hurt.

Turan, Emissary of the Fly World
Turan, Emissary of the Fly World
5 years ago

Straying a bit from the topic, though inspired by the image in the post: I am always confused–nay, flabbergasted–by the MGOTW/Incel outrage over women dyeing their hair. Their justification, so far as I have been able to understand it, is that women who do this are lying, they are hiding their true selves. Now, there might be at least a faint hint of logic in this if their anger was directed at, say, women who bleached their hair because blondes are perceived as sexier, or who colored gray hair to make themselves appear younger. They would still be jerks, but at least one could sort of see a point.

But, no. Their focus is entirely, as the graphic reminds us, on pink, blue, and green hair–all colors that do not occur naturally in human hair. No woman who has dyed her hair one of these colors has ever done so with the expectation of fooling someone into thinking it is her natural color. She does it for fun, to make a statement, simply because she likes the look, but not for deceit.

Am I wrong to assume that the real objection is that the women who do this do so for their own benefit, not to please men? I suspect that the complainers actually don’t mind women who dye for the reasons I gave in the first paragraph, because that may be done to make them more attractive in men’s eyes.

Scanisaurus
Scanisaurus
5 years ago

I’m glad at least someone in authority is finally taking it seriously.
I find it equal parts saddening and alarming that none of the proffesional psychologists I’ve seen had ever as much as heard of incels as a concept or the whole gamer-gate movement, and it feels like everyone not already dedicated to online feminist forums just chalks it up to pointless and harmless internet fads for teens on par with fidget spinners or the Willy Wonka meme, even after incels are literally killing people on the news.

kupo
kupo
5 years ago

Am I wrong to assume that the real objection is that the women who do this do so for their own benefit, not to please men?

You are spot on. And my mostly-blue head doesn’t care how they feel about it.

Victorious Parasol
Victorious Parasol
5 years ago

@ Turan

A couple years ago, I went blue to celebrate the 1-year anniversary of not dying. Mr. Parasol thought it looked great, and he approved of me not dying in the ICU the year before. I thought it looked great, but I didn’t feel the need to keep it up. Perhaps I’ll dye it again in a few years for our 25th anniversary. Or just for the heck of it. Or maybe I’ll just get a streak done in a fancy color.

Yutolia the Green Hash Pronoun Boner
Yutolia the Green Hash Pronoun Boner
5 years ago

@kupo, turan:

I was at my friend’s house when her boyfriend came over. She was really excited to show him her new dye job. After she showed him, she left the room to go do something and when she was gone he said to me, “why do you women think men want you dye your hair? Don’t you know we don’t like it?” I responded that there are a lot of reasons that women dye their hair and most of them don’t have anything to do with men.

He refused to believe that, even though I was with her when she did it and I know it had nothing to do with him at all. He couldn’t get his head around the idea that women do things and exist separately from men’s desires.

Yutolia the Green Hash Pronoun Boner
Yutolia the Green Hash Pronoun Boner
5 years ago

This was about 20 years ago now, wow, time flies!

weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee

It would also be helpful if the Air Force did something about the pressure its members are subjected to to become an Evangelical Christian and the bullying of openly non-Christian people. Because white supremacy and male supremacy are very much tied into Evangelical Christianity.

kupo
kupo
5 years ago

@Yutolia
It’s so weird when guys think we do this shit for them. No, honey, you’re not worth hours of processing time. I do it for me. Because, I mean, come on.

comment image

Why wouldn’t I want this hair?

Bina
5 years ago

@Yutolia:

Women do everything they do at men or for their benefit, didn’t you know? [/sarcasm]

No joke, though, I got that as a 13-year-old from some guy in Grade 8 who I (now) guess had a crush on me, but hated my makeup. Needless to say, I lost all interest in him the moment those words dropped from his lips. (Yup, that’s right, fellas, our crushes on you die based on your idiotic utterances to and about us. Let that marinate for a bit.)

If only they knew how many things we did to please only ourselves, and not someone else (especially them), they really would die mad.

Lainy
Lainy
5 years ago

I use to dye my hair purple because children would come up to me and ask me if I was a fairy. I don’t do it now because I’m growing it out to donate it and I don’t think they accepted dyed hair.

Pagan Reader - Misandrist Spinster

@kupo
Such beautiful hair! I love the colors

Steph Tohill
Steph Tohill
5 years ago

Am I wrong to assume that the real objection is that the women who do this do so for their own benefit, not to please men? I suspect that the complainers actually don’t mind women who dye for the reasons I gave in the first paragraph, because that may be done to make them more attractive in men’s eyes.

It’s a funny one as when this topic has come up with men I know they seem more confused, like genuinely confused that a woman may choose to do something without consideration of how men think about it. It’s not like they object per se, it’s that they genuinely believe everything women do is for men, so they feel women just aren’t getting the message that men don’t like it or somebody (typically “feminists”) are manipulating women.

Ditto short hair and tattoos. It’s like there are men who are genuinely incapable of understanding that a woman may choose to do something without considering how men feel about it!

kupo
kupo
5 years ago

@Pagan Reader
Thank you!

Genjones
Genjones
5 years ago

In other good news, the Plain View project documenting violent and extremist rhetoric on law enforcement forums has resulted in a lot of these officers being pulled from duty

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/philadelphia-plain-view-project-police-social-media-racism-offensive-facebook.amp

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