By David Futrelle
On Wednesday night, a gunman opened fire on patrons at two separate hookah bars in Hanau, Germany, killing nine; he and his elderly mother were later found dead in his apartment.
Like many mass shooters today, he left behind a manifesto (link available on request), one that revealed him to be a genocidal racist and eugenicist who wanted the people in a wide swath of countries — from North Africa all the way to the Philippines — to be wiped off the face of the earth. His massacre — which seems to have been directed at Turkish immigrants, the main patrons of the bars he chose to target — was his way of getting attention to his genocidal ideas.
He also wove a strange and paranoid tale about his own life, claiming that he had been monitored since birth by a shadowy agency eager to hear and capitalize on his thoughts. He claims, among other things, that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were his idea, that Donald Trump stole his slogan “America First,” and that he came up with the basic premises of a number of Hollywood movies and TV shows, from “Look Who’s Talking,” “The Cell,” and “Prison Break.” He also believes that the “invisible people” monitoring him can read (and control) minds. This portion of his manifesto reads less like a political declaration than the ramblings of a paranoid schizophrenic.
The 43-year-old shooter also made a few remarks, almost in passing, suggesting that he had never had a girlfriend, and some have taken this to mean that he was an “incel” This non-factual “fact” has made it into several news stories so far, and even onto Wikipedia,with The Sun describing him in a headline as an “‘Incel’ terrorist” and offering up a potted history of the incel movement to explain his rage. Meanwhile, The Independent (which should know better) made the contradictory claim that he
identified as an “incel”, and wrote that he had not been in a relationship with a woman, out of choice, for the past 18 years.
You can see the problem immediately; this is a claim that rebuts itself. “Incel” stands for “involuntary celibate”; anyone who claims to be celibate by choice is by definition not an incel. The shooter claims that in his younger years, from his mid-teens through his early twenties, he simply could not find a girlfriend who lived up to his exacting standards. “[T]o take a less good looking woman,” he wrote, “was out of the question – I wanted the best or nothing.”
In the years since then, he claimed that he remained single because “I know that I’m being monitored.”
There is no trace of the incel ideology anywhere in the shooter’s manifesto — no incel lingo, no rants against too-picky “femoids”or too-handsome Chads, no disquisitions on some lost golden age when every good man was able to date and ultimately marry his “looksmatch.” Unlike incels, the shooter did not blame women for rejecting him, nor (as far as we can tell from the manifesto) did he blame society for encouraging these women to “ride the cock carousel” with everyone but him.
Incel ideology is all about cultivating a deep sense of grievance toward women and feminism; the shooter’s grievances were directed at immigrants and Muslims and people of color generally — mostly North Africans, Middle Easterners, and South Asians — and at the people he imagined were monitoring him. If the shooter was even aware of the incel movement, there’s no evidence of it in the manifesto itself.
Indeed, though one imagines the shooter was radicalized at least in part online, as every right-wing extremist seems to be these days, there’s little in his manifesto suggesting just where, online or off, he got any of his ideas. There are no references to other mass shooters, no mention of the “great replacement” theory or the alt-right vision of “white genocide”, no sly allusions to 4chan memes. And while he lists Israel as one of the countries whose people deserve to die en masse, his conspiracy theories make no mention of Jews at all. A brief video he made aimed at Americans referred to an underground network of satanic baby-abusers, but made no reference to Pizzagate or QAnon.
In short, he’s given those us trying to make sense of his motivations plenty to work with. But, while his genocidal racism is certainly clear and obvious, he remains in many ways a mystery — and will remain so unless and until we find more evidence of his beliefs.
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This is absolutely heinous. Let me be the first to jump in and say that delusions and/or schizophrenia don’t make a person violent. (The regular commenters know this but is seems like a reminder is always in order for those who haven’t read the comments policy closely yet.)
I’ve had psychotic episodes in the recent past. “Psychotic” sounds so dramatic, but really it’s just a tendency to believe things without any basis in reality, taken to the extreme. For example, I very recently believed without a doubt that David F and some commenters on this blog were sending me coded messages. (Not to worry; medication has helped.)
I’ve never even considered hurting anyone but myself as a result of these experiences. Or blaming giant swathes of the human race arbitrarily.
I don’t want to make internet diagnoses, so I will just say that this is a new level of conspiratorial thinking that seems rather unprecedented. Just the sheer number of things he seems to have thrown in. And the taking credit for the movies and Trump’s slogan is unusual—I haven’t seen anyone else do that. This doesn’t seem as clear-cut as other cases of far right terrorism: we have a motive, but it seems different from other similar terrorist backstories.
The thing that is really concerning is how desensitized we are to shootings like this at this point. Shootings happen every day, we no longer have time to mourn.
Lot of parallels between this shooter and the QAnon believers, which is pretty darn scary. These people are expecting a bloodbath, with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama being executed on live television, and if they don’t get it, some of them might try to take matters into their own hands.
@BBBB
They remind me a bit of the dominionists. Dominionists think that if the end times don’t roll around, they should try to make them come. These guys think that if the promised executions don’t come, they should do it themselves. Both are terrifying yet many believe in those ideologies.
The description of his manifesto reminds me a bit of a more racist John Hinckley, Jr.
This is again ot but I’m rewatching the batman series from my childhood and they straight up have an incel character that just turned himself into a clay monster just to find out no matter how he changes his look, he can’t act so no one wants to higher him and now he’s on a rampage.
Possibly, but definitely they are emotionally over invested in fulfilling these ideologies, and when reality is not in agreement, they become emotionally unstable. Black and White thinking is exacerbated. They NEED it to be true, like an addict needs a fix.
And it’s hard to know which drives them over the edge, the ideas or the need for them to be validated by violence.
There needs to be the social equivalent of methadone for these people… maybe hard labor with therapy
Most schizophrenics have their first psychotic break in their early to mid 20s and it sounds like he had a big change in his life about then. This guy sounds like he was a paranoid schizophrenic. Some of what he wrote is pretty classic.
While most schizophrenics are very mild-mannered, pleasant people (I’ve known several, two of whom were not on meds at the time I knew them), paranoids are slightly more likely to become violent. But even paranoids are actually much less likely to be violent than the average population, so even if I’m right about him, he is very much an outlier.
Some people seem to think all violent “lone terrorists” are mentally ill, but I tend to think of them as someone throwing a temper tantrum. Personality disorders, for sure, but not insane. This guy may be an exception though, someone actually psychotic. If that’s true, I’d almost rather the incels get blamed for what happened rather than his schizophrenia. Almost. Only because people with schizophrenia don’t need this bullshit piled on them, whereas incels seem to enjoy wallowing in their disfunction.
Some of the people that believe in thoses conspirational ideologies need something as simple as a decent living. Despair damage the psyche rather badly at time.
Of course, they are still assholes by reacting like that instead of more constructive ways.
To those who wanted to downplay white oppression against non white men, I stand today proud and vindicted…I am pretty sure this won’t be designated as terrorism and will be chalked down to “mental.health”… If a man chooses to be single his whole life, he needs then Buddhism and NoFap else a single man will push his brain into ever weirder conspiracy theories
Buddham saranam gacchami,
Dhammam saranam gacchami,
Sangham saranam gacchami
Since Turkish migrants were mentioned here, I want to say Turkey has lots of problems since the AKP took power. People need to be persuaded against voting them, and killing immigrants that may want to escape the capitalist, fundamentalist and overall authoritarian regime gives Turks less hope of a better life and may empower more authoritarianism.
As someone from the Philippines, while our country and people have lots of problems that do need to be fixed, he wants to genocide a people who are known for their warm personality towards others and who possess a vibrant and unique culture. I’ve heard some anecdotes that patients where I live are beginning to prefer staff from the Philippines because of their hospitality.
Such a genocidal mentality will only attract more hate.
Right wing terrorism is definitely a systemic problem. It’s so disgusting that this is always blamed on mentally ill people.
@SRLO : no, you stand neither proud nor vindicted. Also, reading what the article say and what the comment are is probably a good idea.
You have a serious problem of thinking shouting “I am right” at random fact constitute a reasoning.
@SRLO
Maybe a story that starts with “nine people are dead now” isn’t a reason to “stand proud and vindicted”.
Seriously, tact!
@SRLO
Nobody is trying to downplay such oppression. In the last thread we were arguing that women are oppressed as well and you had to drag the Holocaust in for some reason. Not sure how this is a vindication.
This isn’t the best time to push your ideology, seeing as nine people just died.
I’m thinking the new troll is seriously short of amusement value. Can they be traded in?
Wow way to pull out your dick at a funeral and talk about how great it is semen boy
@SRLO
You disgusting ghoul. These people are dead and you use their deaths to push your esoteric wanking habits.
How dare you?
Please do not ever come to Hanau. Leave us to mourn in peace.
@Daughter
I hope these are the last deaths before white countries wake up from their continuing madness…The same madness that led these countries to use nuclear weapons upon children and pregnant women of Fallujah…to this day children are born with serious birth defects …”Ghoul”—-What an interesting choice of words!!! The same word whites have used since time immemorial in derogatory sense against men from the Middle East…why am I not surprised that this very word was used on a day when many Kurdish brothers and sisters fell?
@SRLO
If you want thing to change, take up political activism, not rambling about semen.
@Naglfar
It is better to help individuals to build better lives and construct fortresses of emotional,financial,health and physical security…Activism will bring nothing as powerful people have deeply entrenched networks through which they will continue to oppress the people…nothing other than revolution that overthrows the present order will work.. a more equitable world order where a Bangladeshi woman whose mother was crushed under the concrete boulders of a collapsing garments factory has as much voice as a champagne feminist or a nightclub feminist
Not the worst flounce, as it lasted a couple of days. Points off for falsely claiming that people here downplay racism though.
6/10 for now. Subject to going down if SRLO continues to act like an ass.
@SRLO
And you are doing that how?
Also, that wouldn’t stop the far right extremists like the Hanau killer. His actions were a product of extreme political views supported by the rising global far right wing. And that is something that needs to be stopped.
And until the revolution we should just suck it up?
I’ve heard this argument before. For many of us, waiting for a revolution isn’t an option, and we need to make things better in the interim whether a revolution is coming or not. Plus, revolutions don’t always end well (c.f. the French Revolution, China’s cultural revolution).
… What? I’ve genuinely never heard of the word ghoul being used as a racial slur. In English, it’s generally used to refer to someone who is inappropriately gleeful or fixated on death, and doesn’t have any racial connotations. It’s a loanword from Persian, but English has tons of loanwords that aren’t slurs.
Is the term used in a derogatory fashion in a different language? Or are you just accusing the commentariat of bigotry because you seem to think that’s the only way to win an argument?
@Semen
Okay since your gonna be an ass, me and my big white titties that your so afraid of are gonna go call my brown husband and steal his sexual semen power before he goes to bed