By David Futrelle
On Wednesday evening, a 20-year old construction worker drove to the Westgate Entertainment Center, near Phoenix Arizona, a popular spot for shoppers and diners that had only just been reopened to the public after the state’s quarantine restrictions were lifted. He was armed with an AR-15 rifle.
In a live Snapchat video he told the world that “I’m going to be the shooter of Westgate 2020. This is to get back to mean society, so let’s get this done.”
Then he marched into the mall, AR-15 in one hand, cell phone in the other, ultimately gunning down three victims — none of whom, thankfully, have died — before his rifle jammed. He streamed at least some of his rampage on Snapchat, excerpts of which are going around online (I’m not going to link to them.) Police arrived quickly and arrested him, they said, without incident.
Yesterday, at the shooter’s first court apperance, Maricopa County prosecutor Edward Leiter filled us in on what he said were the shooter’s motives. The shooter, he said, had told investigators that he identified as an incel, and that his shooting rampage was an attempt to
tak[e] out his expressed anger at society, the feeling that he has been bullied, the feeling that women didn’t want him.
The shooter, he continued, “specifically said that he was targeting couples,” and indeed two of the victims were reportedly a couple.
Do we need to know any more about this creep? We don’t need to know any more. This is all textbook incel shooter shit. And it’s the second time this week I’ve had to write about a would-be mass murderer motivated by incel ideology. The first was a Toronto teenager charged with terrorism after he attacked sex workers with a machete at a massage parlor; one of his victims died.
As I do every time an incel murderer (or, in this case, would-be murderer) appears in the news, I made a depressing trek over to the Incels.co forums to see what the regulars there were saying about this wannabe Elliot Rodger.
And it was mostly predicable stuff. Depressing, but predictable.
“All hail St. Hernandez,” wrote someone calling himself universallyabhorred, “though his count was low, his heart was in the right place.”
“AnothER saint,” agreed FinnCell, capitalizing the initials of incel mass killer Elliot Rodger, almost universally beloved by the incel crowd.
Others mocked the shooter for not killing anyone in his rampage.
“[H]is count was ZERO,” complained IncelKing.
The dude was such a failure that he even failed at going ER. Now he’s gonna rot for the next 25+ years in prison because he didnt even kill himself after the attack, ovER for him.
Nystagmuscel added:
He is a retard who couldn’t even kill anyone at close range. Fuck him
The Incels.co regulars seem most bothered by the fact that the shooter didn’t finish off one woman who was caught on his video pleading for her life. (At this point in his rampage his gun may have already been jammed.)
“This is why when you go ER you must be 100% commited,” wrote werty1457. “He’s gonna get life and he didn’t even kill anyone, sad shit.”
But both the cheering squad and the complainers were overshadowed somewhat by those claiming that the gun rampage was somehow a false-flag setup designed to make incels look bad — and make it easier to round them up and put them in camps. One commenter wondered aloud if the shooting was “another crisis actors pys-ops.” Another declared that it “[c]ertainly looks like a hoax … .”
“It’s obviously fake,” wrote someone called Arthas93.
((they)) are not even putting effort in it anymore. Can almost see the ketchup packs.
Low effort, bad direction. It’s like a bollywood movie. This psyops got a C- for lack of effort.
Meanwhile, someone called chudur-budur suggested that Hernandez had been “framed,” as part of a nefarious plot to target “ugly men.”
“Now every crime is somehow related to ‘I.N.C.E.L,'” he wrote.
[G]et ready to be sent to gulag buddy boyos (assuming you are genuinely ugly virgin and not a larper).
We used to make jokes about this, but looks like it’s getting real.
“For real,” replied based_meme.
We were really joking about this shit for a couple of years. Now it’s likely to become a reality that we might get arrested for just being ugly misogynists.
In a followup comment, chudur-budur added:
They were trying to frame ugly men for a long long time, through title 9, consent circus and shit. But it was not effective or quick enough to lock us up. Now they are coming up with these incel “””attacks””” to legalize any ugly men to be detained.
While some blamed the alleged plot against incels on the Jews (see above), others suggested, as one commenter put it, that incels themselves were “being persecuted like the jews in germany.”
So on one side we’ve got incels lionizing this creep as a “saint” On the other we’ve got incels angry at him for not being more bloodthirsty. And then smack dab in the middle we have the “false flaggers,” pretending that this shooting is some sort of elaborately staged psyop aimed at them.
No one needs to stage anything. These murders and attempted murders are the inevitable result of the poisonous incel ideology, which encourages young men to stoke their already extreme anger and bitterness that they can’t have the adoration of the very particular subset of women they desire — and then tells them there’s nothing to do about their predicament but to kill themselves, preferably after killing a lot of “normies” first.
The incels lusting for more blood aren’t really much different from those crying “hoax.” Indeed, one of those talking “false flag” is using a picture of the Aurora theater shooter as his avatar. These are aspiring villains who see themselves — and want others to see them — as victims.
I feel sympathy for lonely, depressed men; I’ve been one. I feel sympathy for bullied boys; I’ve been one of them too. But I can’t feel sympathy for incels any more than I can feel sympathy for Nazis. Incel ideology takes normal loneliness — the kind that almost all of us have felt at some time — and turns it into hate, directed inward and outward at once. It’s toxic to anyone who is touched by it, whether incels themselves or the people they victimize.
I can only hope I don’t have to write another one of these posts any time soon. But tomorrow is the 6th anniversary of Elliot Rodger’s killing spree in Isla Vista, California — the incels are already celebrating — and I’m not hopeful.
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If they’re so fearful of persecution, why can’t they just do the smart thing and find another label to hide behind?
@ David F
Just a minor point that doesn’t detract from the substance of the story; but it’s Westgate not Westlake. Westlake was another shooting; sigh.
Hopefully the incels lionizing him and those criticizing him start feuding with each other and tear their community apart. If the community is torn apart it’s less likely that more men will get involved in this stuff.
I didn’t even realize—were these shootings planned for this time because of the Elliot Rodger anniversary?
@Naglfar
I’m afraid incels will have no trouble compartmentalising the ideas that he was a heroic martyr for the cause, and it was a hoax to make incels look bad. They are experts at believing contradictory things.
How awful does a person have to be to want to kill rather than accept the fact that we all get to choose who we sleep with? To kill! My anger is hard to put into words.
I choose who I want and that’s that.
Have you ever seen how even incels who haven’t killed yet still relish the idea that women like me will be scared? I never ever will.
I will have my stable of gorgeous tall handsome sweet men and will never be stopped in my art. Ever.
My prayers for all those hurt in this awful thing.
They wish
If someone wanted to stage “ugly men” as hateful misogynists, for whatever weird reason, they’d definitely start the process by hiring a bunch of online propaganda workers to impersonate a whole online subculture of embittered loners who are comically obsessed with their lack of success with women.
You could go a long way in using automation to generate content for this operation, because the rhetoric of bona fide haters tends to be largely repetitive and semantically fuzzy, only intended to be read for the buzz words and buzz phrases. With some luck, you could lure in a few genuine misogynist misfits who don’t realize or care that their “community” is a professional sockpuppet operation intended to cultivate their aggrievement. Staging occasional acts of high profile violence in the name of these self-proclaimed “ugly men” would be just a cherry on top, to draw mainstream attention to an online “subculture” that would be otherwise relatively obscure, only noticed by a few concerned feminist critics.
Incels: “Woo! A mass shooting! My only complaint is that he didn’t kill more people!”
Also Incels: “Why does everyone hate us?”
…It’s like a cartoon villain and a cartoon fool had a baby.
They’re only victims of the culture of toxic masculinity that drilled into them that their worth is based solely on their having a personal fuck slave.
@anonymous
Because their toxic views would seep through, and inside of a month that new label would be as tainted as the first?
Not to mention, in the time it took for everyone to realise what they were up to, they wouldn’t be able to whine about being persecuted.
Funny that someone who thinks he was born ugly and doomed to be ugly and therefore beyond help thinks the same applies to his misogyny. If someone told me every nonbinary person wearing a red shirt will be rounded up, I’d give up the red shirt, because that’s something I can do. (Not that it’s that easy to get rid of your misogyny, but still.)
I really hope others will follow Canada in classifying these incel attacks as terrorism, but it kind of scares me what incels and their warped sense of reality will make of that. “So now we’re terrorists for being ugly, huh??” No, you’re not. It’s never about your looks.
No, really. We were just kidding around about how the authorities would arrest guys for being ugly. Just like we were kidding around about how we’d love to kill women. Then some of us actually did kill women. Now these killers are dead and are saints to us. Anyway, where was I. Oh yes. First we jest about killing and then some of us kill. Then the killers either are killed by cops or go to prison. Then for a moment we worry about getting arrested because — uh — ugly guys. Then we go back to same old, same old: making threats against women’s lives and telling fellow incels to kill themselves. It’s a way to pass the time.
Incels: “It’s all slanderous lies to make us look bad and he didn’t do it, and also he is a hero for doing it and should have done more.”
It’s not two different sets of people arguing over it, it’s the same set of people holding both beliefs simultaneously as is convenient. You get them same sh*t with neo-Nazis and the holocaust: They’ll simultaneously denounce it all as a lie made up to discredit their “heroes” and also cheer them on for having done it.
Indeed. In addition, neo-Nazis tend to also claim the holocaust didn’t happen, or the fatalities have at least been greatly exaggerated.
In that vein, it seems that when people call some modern act of violence “false flag”, they typically mean it’s a fake incident involving crisis actors etc. In my understanding, a proper false flag attack would involve real violence, committed in one’s opponent’s name. Conspiracy theorists don’t care about these kind of distinctions, and neither do terrorist apologists or radical propaganda jockeys.
Generally, committing a proper false flag attack would show extreme callousness, as in murdering innocents for political points. On the other hand, a fake attack would involve more elaborate deception of what really happened. If you ask a conspiracy theorist which one of these is more likely to have happened, they’ll answer “yes”.
@LPO
This seems to be what happened to TERFs. The term “TERF” was invented to describe them in 2008 by a trans-inclusive feminist, then when people started to realize that it meant a hate group they started insisting it was a slur (all while some still described themselves as such) and demanding to be called “gender critical.” Now that people are realizing what “gender critical” means, I’ve heard some saying that that is a slur and demanding other terms be used.
Incels and TERFs have quite a bit in common.
Re: neo-Nazis and doublethink
I recall hearing their view summed up in one article as “it didn’t happen but it was really cool.” The ability to hold contradictory ideas at the same time is a key part of cults, as this breaks down any sort of logical defenses against cult propaganda. A similar example is how fascist leaders emphasize that their enemies are both extremely powerful but also weak and destroyable at the same time.
Re: false flags
I feel like part of why they keep trying to claim things are false flags is projection. Incels and those like them are happy about murdering innocent people, so they projection that others are just as awful to do a false flag.
Hi, everybody! Sorry, been gone for a bit and… Oh. Of course. Trust these bitter assholes to not being slowed down by a global pandemic (unlike me whose reason for being inactive on this site for a few months is 100% due to confinement-induced laziness).
Anyway, good to be back (to a point given the circumstances); nice to see the regulars haven’t lost their bite.
@Kat: pretty sure it’s more a lifestyle at this point rather than just a way to pass the time 😉
Since the police took him alive without incident, we also know that he was white.
@Allandrel
That’s not very surprising to me seeing as the majority of incel terrorists have been white. It seems there are incels who aren’t white (some have said they are Asian, and Elliot Rodger was part Asian IIRC), but as with most of the alt right it’s very white.
@Paireon
Hello and nice to see you back!
I hope you are doing well even as things are difficult for all and horrible news like this still happens.
@StaceySmartyPantsTwiceRemoved: Thanks, and yeah, apart from confinement having brought out my inherent laziness to the fore as previously mentioned (and the large variety of shitshows on the news happening because/in spite of coronavirus), I’ve been holding up quite well in confinement; for once my autism seems to be an advantage rather than a handicap LOL.
(Also the Canadian pandemic social net’s currently doing me a solid so even financially I’m pretty fine; probably gonna have to pay back some of it come tax time next year, but not much I can do about it so…)
@Paireon
Yes, the isolation all affects us differently. It stopped some progress on some really cool projects I had going but I’m at least trying to keep up with the planning stuff I can do at home. I miss my men from my social group, my gym and dance classes. But I do some stuff on Zoom with some awesome people who were donating to my projects. It’s still hard though. And reading about all this awfulness in the news affects me. It makes me despise incels even more if that was even possible and makes me want to be building my stable of just that type of men that incels think I’m not allowed to like.
Projection, projection, projection.
They think – or claim – people will hate them for a characteristic they can’t help (their alleged ugliness) when that’s exactly what they do with their misogyny.
And their racism. I didn’t catch it in the other post (well, 3 posts ago), but they put out a lot of anti-Asian stuff. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the woman the “Daily Blackpill” guy mocked looked Indian or Bangladeshi. I don’t think “currycel” was exactly complimentary either. And even here:
Why is that his go-to example? I mean, Bollywood puts out some crappy movies…as does Hollywood. As do all major movie-producing countries, I’d wager. Anyway, there’s no reason to assume non-racism from someone who thinks incel shootings are faked by The Jews.
But sure, “ugly men” are the most discriminated-against group and we’re about to throw them all in gulags or something. Sure.
…I don’t even want to deal with the stuff about the actual shooting. I’m just glad no one was killed.
@Epitome
I know a number of them are Asian and self identify as “currycels” or “ricecels,” so it could be some sort of self-hatred thing.
Oh, yeah, exactly. Hah. Yeah, that’s what I want.
First of all what’s ugly? Some people are attracted to some attributes in people, others are attracted to other attributes. And yeah some of those attributes are physical sometimes for some people but human beings vary! Incels are so creepy that they can’t see that just because I am not attracted to a guy that doesn’t mean I want him in prison or killed. But they can’t feel the same about me…no, I don’t deserve to live or be safe from harm if I don’t meet their standards in terms of what I even desire. I’m not even allowed to have desires. That’s why I hate incels. They are gross creeps and hypocrites.
Thanks the Goddess for the handsome beautiful Adonises in my stable who are sweet and caring and devoted and respect me and my desires.
If only we could be free of this pandemic again and I could enjoy them again 🙁
Re: short, ugly men, look at Ron Jeremy. He’s 5’6″ and charitably speaking looks like a potato with facial hair. His principal claims to fame are more appearances in porn movies than any other actor and his massively promiscuous offscreen life.