Click here for Part 1 of ‘The Incel Massacres’
Transcript
This episode contains racist and sexist language, discussion of suicide and sexual assault, and graphic descriptions of violence that may be disturbing to some audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
[Elliot Rodger]: “Hi, Elliot Rodger here. Well, this is my last video. It all has to come to this. Tomorrow is the day of retribution…the day in which I will have my revenge against humanity, against all of you.”
That’s 22-year-old Elliot Rodger recording a video of himself from the driver’s seat of his BMW in Isla Vista, California. It’s May of 2014, and he’s posted many other videos to YouTube prior to this – some quite disturbing – but none so much so as this.
[Elliot Rodger]: “For the last eight years of my life, ever since I hit puberty I have been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires all because girls have never been attracted to me. Girls gave their affection and sex and love to other men but never to me. I am 22 years old and I’m still a virgin. I’ve never even kissed by a girl. I have been through college for two-and-a-half years, more than that actually, and I am still a virgin. It has been very torturous. College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure, but in those years I’ve had to rot in loneliness. It’s not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me. I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. It is an injustice, a crime, because I don’t know what you don’t see in me. I’m the perfect guy, but yet, you throw yourselves at all these obnoxious men instead of me, the supreme gentleman. I will punish all of you for it. On the day of retribution, I am going to enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up blonde slut I see inside there.”
In our last episode, we looked at the rise of reactionary anti-feminist subcultures and how Inceldom began to evolve from a constructive support network, to a far more misogynistic echo chamber. If you haven’t listened to that yet, you might want to go back and finish that one before continuing with this episode.
We looked at acts of misogynist mass murder by Marc Lepine in 1989 and George Sodini in 2009, both of whom would later be claimed by misogynist incels as cut from the same cloth, and hailed as saints. But neither laid out their sexual frustration and hatred of women in such comprehensive, unambiguous detail as Elliot Rodger, who would go on to have more influence and notoriety than any other figure in misogynist Inceldom.
In his wake, a rapid-fire succession of deadly terrorist attacks would unfold, perpetrated by men identifying as incels and often explicitly citing Rodger as inspiration. These acts would cause some governments to begin placing Inceldom alongside ideologies like Islamist extremism and White nationalism as national security threats. They would also confound authorities and sociologists trying to figure out how to respond to such rapidly growing ranks of dangerous men harboring an all-consuming hatred of women and the society that’s allegedly failed to deliver the female companionship they feel entitled to…on this episode of Manmade Catastrophes.
[Intro music]
The day after recording his horrifying video from his BMW, Elliot Rodger began his so-called day of retribution in Isla Vista by ambushing his two roommates and a third man who was visiting, stabbing them each to death one by one as they came into the apartment. One of them, he stabbed 94 times. He later went to a nearby Starbucks for a coffee, came back to the apartment complex, and at 9:17pm, uploaded his retribution video to YouTube. One minute later, he emailed a 137-page document to a few dozen contacts.
He proceeded to drive toward the University of California, Santa Barbara. As planned, he pulled up to the Alpha Phi =sorority house and banged on the door aggressively for several minutes. Luckily, the door was locked and the women inside refused to answer. Several of them did, however, look out their window in horror as a group of three women from another sorority walked by across the street. Rodger, now back in his car, drew a semi-automatic pistol and fired a dozen shots at the group, killing 19-year-old Veronika Weiss and 22-year-old Katherine Cooper. The third woman was shot five times but survived. She would later recall that Rodger had a “smirky, grimacy smile” as he gunned them down.
After leaving the sorority, Rodger’s rampage becomes completely random and unhinged. Two blocks away, he fires into a convenience store, killing 20-year-old Christopher Martinez. He then continues driving, shooting at random people and mowing them down with his car. Eventually he encounters several police officers and exchanges gunfire with them. One manages to hit Rodger in the hip, but he continues driving. He then rams into a cyclist, whose body smashes his windshield. This causes Rodger to careen into a group of parked cars and come to halt. He’s now killed six people – all UCSB students between 19 and 22 years old – and injured another 14. At 9:35pm, police pull Rodger out of his car, dead from a self-inflected gunshot wound, just 17 minutes after he sent his email and began his rampage.
That email contained Rodgers’ 137-page memoir-slash-manifesto titled My Twisted World, in which he chronicles his entire life and how he came to develop a violent hatred of women.
Rodger came from a relatively well-off family with a Hollywood photographer and film director father, but he was socially awkward and hyper-sensitive. He’d had trouble making friends all his life, and claimed that he was frequently bullied. But his inability to attract females is what consumed him from his teenage years onward. When he was 20, he moved to Santa Barbara to attend school, and he was optimistic – he associated the city and college life with parties and sex.
But his first week there only served to undermine his confidence, as well as expose some of his extremely hateful attitudes. In his memoir, he described his two roommates constantly inviting a friend of theirs over named Chance.
[Elliot Rodger]: “I was eating a meal in the kitchen when he came over and started bragging to my housemates about his success with girls. I couldn’t stand it, so I proceeded to ask them all if they were virgins. They all looked at me weirdly and said that they had lost their virginity long ago. I felt so inferior, as it reminded me of how much I have missed out in life. And then this Black boy named Chance said that he lost his virginity when he was only thirteen! In addition, he said that the girl he lost his virginity to was a blonde white girl! I was so enraged that I almost splashed him with my orange juice. I indignantly told him that I did not believe him, and then I went to my room. I cried and cried and cried, and then I called my mother and cried to her on the phone. How could an inferior, ugly Black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves.
I deserve it more. I tried not to believe his foul words, but they were already said, and it was hard to erase from my mind. If this is actually true, if this ugly Black filth was able to have sex with a blonde White girl at the age of thirteen while I’ve had to suffer virginity all my life, then this just proves how ridiculous the female gender is. They would give themselves to this filthy scum, but they reject me? The injustice! Females truly have something mentally wrong with them. Their minds are flawed, and at this point in my life I was beginning to see it.”
Over the following two years, Rodger would go to great lengths to try to attract women, but his strategies were almost entirely passive. With his parents’ money, he bought an expensive BMW and wore designer clothes—thinking that the image he exuded would prompt women to come on to him. When that didn’t work, he spent thousands of dollars on lottery tickets, thinking immense wealth would be the ticket to social acceptance and attracting women. But he never won.
Rodger also appeared drawn to the pickup artist community—after his rampage, people noticed that his YouTube account followed several pickup gurus. But, however objectionable pickup artist tactics might be, it appears Rodger was too timid to actually try them. He constantly recounted being defeated before he even acted. If there was a woman he fixated on in one of his classes, he would be crushed if she had a boyfriend or just didn’t seem to notice him…and he would drop the class. He complained that there were so many pretty blonde girls around, and he wished he had the courage to go up and ask them out. “But they would have seen me as a creep,” he wrote. “Girls are so cruel.”
On one occasion as he was walking across a bridge, he did summon the courage to squeak out a “hello” to a woman passing by. When she didn’t respond, Rodger said he felt so humiliated that he went into a bathroom and cried for an hour. It would turn out that ultimately, hating women would be easier than making a genuine effort to talk to them.
But even if a woman had approached Rodger, it’s questionable whether he would’ve been able to connect. His writing displayed a fixation on quote “tall, pretty, blonde girls.” He was attracted by women’s looks, but it didn’t seem much else. Despite his complaints that women couldn’t recognize his personality as the perfect guy and the supreme gentleman, he seemed to view women—especially the “blondes” he desired—as interchangeable, de-individualized vessels for fulfilling his desires. And he assumed them to be cold and cruel before even talking to them.
He did speak of wanting to be loved and having a girlfriend, but he didn’t seem to view the prospect as an equal, mutually fulfilling arrangement—it was more a means for his own sexual contentment and social validation. Much like gym shooter George Sodini had written about needing a woman in order to feel confident in work and with other men, Rodger seemed to view a romantic relationship, to some extent at least, as a status symbol.
“I needed a girl’s love,” Rodger wrote. “I needed to feel worthy as a male. For so long I have felt worthless, and it’s all girls’ fault. A man having a beautiful girl by his side shows the world that he is worth something.”
On the eve of Rodger’s birthday came what he said was the final straw. He decided to go out in Isla Vista to try to lose his virginity before he turned 22, and he was “giving the female gender one last chance to provide me with the pleasures I deserved from them.” He got drunk and walked into a house party, but yet again, his mere silent presence didn’t inspire anyone to approach him. Instead, he quietly seethed as he observed women talking to men at the party he regarded as obnoxious slobs.
[Elliot Rodger]: “As my frustration grew, so did my anger. I came across this Asian guy who was talking to a White girl. The sight of that filled me with rage. I always felt as if White girls thought less of me because I was half Asian, but then I see this White girl at the party talking to a full-blooded Asian. I never had that kind of attention from a White girl! And White girls are the only girls I’m attracted to, especially the blondes. How could an ugly Asian attract the attention of a White girl, while a beautiful Eurasian like myself never had any attention from them?”
Rodger went out onto a ledge, where he looked down at partygoers and pretended to shoot them with his extended fingers. Several men and women eventually climbed up onto the ledge too and continued socializing with each other, but not Rodger. This further enraged him. He spit insults at them, then tried to push some of the women off the 10-foot ledge. Instead, some of the men pushed him off, shattering his leg, then they proceeded to beat him up, badly bruising his face. Rodger wrote that this complete humiliation was the final straw.
[Elliot Rodger]: “Vengeance is the only path. All other paths had been closed shut. I thought it to be such a tragedy that I was actually going to wage war against women and all of humanity. But then again, women’s rejection of me was a declaration of war. They insulted me by deeming me inferior of their love and sex. They hate me, and I will return that hatred one-thousand-fold. I will inflict suffering on everyone, just like they have made me suffer. In the past, I have always been at their mercy, and I was given none. On the Day of Retribution, everyone will be at my mercy, and in turn I will show them no mercy at all. My retribution will be so devastating that it will shake the very foundations of the world. I cannot kill every single female on earth, but I can deliver a devastating blow that will shake all of them to the core of their wicked hearts.”
After Rodgers’ massacre, his laptop revealed that he had searched for material about George Sodini. He had also been active on the incel forum ForeverAlone, as well as PUAHate, which was created by failed pickup artists to call out the seduction industry and how it “deceives men.” In practice though, it had devolved largely into a woman-hating echo chamber. In his manifesto, Rodger recalled finding the forum in the spring of 2013 and discovering sex-starved men like himself, many of whom shared his hatred of women. “Reading the posts on that website only confirmed many of the theories I had about how wicked and degenerate women really are,” Rodger wrote. “It shows how bleak and cruel the world is due to the evilness of women.”
Rodger had contributed to the forum himself. In one post, he reportedly wrote: “One day incels will realize their true strength and numbers and will overthrow this oppressive feminist system. Start envisioning a world where WOMEN FEAR YOU.”
* * *
Rodger’s rampage would come to redefine Inceldom. Many of the more moderate members of the community were devastated, disgusted and were no longer willing to associate with the identity.
However, the attack electrified the most extreme members. With someone who had explicitly identified as incel and left such a thorough manifesto and video catalogue detailing his grievances with women, they had found their champion. The angriest, most hateful and aggrieved sentiments associated with the subculture were pushed to the fore. ‘Saint Marc Lepine’ gave way to ‘Saint Elliot Rodger’. Using the phrase “Going Sodini” as a shorthand for massacring women out of sexual frustration became “Going ER.” Scores of angelic, haloed images of Rodger began appearing as people’s profile pictures on Manosphere message boards.
These forums had long been playgrounds for shit-posters, trolling with ever-more extreme and provocative posts to one up and egg each other on. Clearly, many didn’t actually believe the bile they spewed. But it’s hard to deny that Inceldom as a subculture became even more toxic in Rodger’s wake and began radicalizing more and more young men with genuinely-held violent misogynist philosophies.
In what might be seen as an early metaphor for the shift, the PUAHate.com forum that Rodger had been active on—flooded with negative media attention—briefly shut down. But within a month, it reemerged under a new URL that seemed to better reflect the true target of these men’s hatred. It was now sluthate.com.
The idea of the Red Pill also branched out. There was the idea of taking the “rape pill,” or being a “rapecel.” These people believe sex is or should be coercive, and that women are too mindless to make sexual decisions for themselves, so men should make it for them. Some misogynist incels similarly liken a man raping a woman to a starving man stealing a loaf of bread, and consider women withholding sex as an act of “reverse rape” that’s just as harmful as actual rape. One study by the non-profit group the Center for Countering Digital Hate looked at one popular incel forum with some 17,000 members and found that on average, rape was mentioned every 29 minutes, and 89 percent of the posters were supportive of it. In forums like this, it’s not uncommon to find users confessing to rape, or soliciting advice on how to get away with it.
Then there’s the fatalistic “Black Pill.” Taking this means to recognize that your sexless situation is permanent and unchangeable. No matter how much you try to improve your looks, finances and behavior, you’re in such a miserable state that you’re destined to exclusion from the female-controlled sexual marketplace. Taking the Black Pill essentially leaves you with three options: lay down and rot, suicide or “go ER” and strike back at the world before you leave it.
Of course, there are many complicated and compounding factors that lead someone to mass murder. An otherwise mentally stable person isn’t going to just stumble onto the wrong website and be goaded into a suicidal murderous rampage. Only a very miniscule fraction of the millions who’ve consumed incel content have actually gone on to kill. But still, falling down a rabbit hole that could lead one from mentally unstable, frustrated virgin to mass murderer was becoming easier.
Maybe you’re on a platform like YouTube or Tiktok and you come across content that anyone, regardless of their beliefs, finds it hard to look away from.
[Tiktok and YouTube clips]
There’s content that exposes gold diggers, women with ridiculous dating standards, stories of false harassment or rape allegations, or men who get screwed in divorce or custody battles. Sometimes this content is created by influencers doing man on the street interviews, or using hidden cameras to conduct what they regard as social experiments. Or sometimes, this content is just rehashed from actual mainstream news stories.
Occasionally these videos are fake—setups with actors intended to provoke controversy, play to their audiences’ biases and elicit engagement. But often, they are often completely genuine stories, with very real female antagonists.
The problem, of course, is when anecdotes like these are cherry-picked and clumped together in a way that invites sweeping generalizations about women. The channels compiling this content frequently dog-whistle their misogynist intentions by having “Red Pill” in their name, or hashtags to that effect that connect it to other content that presents a pretty dim view of women. Their effectiveness can be evidenced as soon as you scroll down through the comments and see terms like AWALT, meaning All Women Are Like That.
But now you’re sucked into the algorithm. If you’re a sexually frustrated young man, you may identify with more and more female-critical content, and you in turn get fed more and more of it.
Or there’s another possible entry route to the pipeline: maybe there’s a microcelebrity YouTuber you follow who has views that are a bit outside the mainstream, but not too extreme. But, because controversy increases clicks and cross-exposure with other influencers likewise helps bring in new audiences, they host someone who is more extreme.
[Andrew Tate on Dave Portnoy clip]
Maybe the figure you follow lobs this more controversial person softball questions, or maybe they do actually debate and challenge them to some extent. Either way, they’ve now introduced you to a more extreme ideology, and maybe even subtly laundered it through the esteem you have for them. Maybe you start following this new figure, and they feed you a stream of more misogynistic, anti-feminist content.
[Andrew Tate clips]
That figure pulls you further down the rabbit hole, validating your increasingly negative inclinations toward relationships, feminism, and women more broadly, which you’re all too eager to have validated. Then they in turn might introduce you to even more extreme figures. They might even explicitly endorse them.
[Alex Jones clips]
Now, extremist ideologies are incrementally becoming more digestible. Maybe the original influencer you followed is himself becoming more radical in response to what resonates with his audience, and pulling you along with him. Then maybe all these misogynistic views you’re being exposed to feed you into other far-right ideologies about gays, minorities, jews, and foreigners, or vice-versa, enflaming a growing sense of grievance and hate.
Or, maybe you don’t start off looking at content that has anything to do with women or politics. Maybe you start off searching around corners of the web that discuss unemployment, suicidal ideation or weightlifting. Even these can cross-pollinate with the Manosphere, and eventually lead to straight-up male supremacist forums.
According to the 2022 paper on incel forums by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, one of the biggest Incel forums as of 2022 was actually founded by two individuals who started at least three separate websites. One of them deals with suicide, and has been accused of hosting discussion that’s encouraged dozens of suicides. Another is an unemployment forum appealing to young men who aren’t working or in school. And the third is a body image forum catering to men that are “looksmaxxing”—trying to improve their physical appearance through a variety of methods. Given the wide overlap in these respective forums’ constituencies, there’s a high degree of cross-pollination, and search engine results for one often lead to the others.
Whatever the entry point, if you ultimately land in a hardcore incel forum and have become receptive to its misogynist messaging and Black Pill thinking, it’s unlikely your views will moderate from there. You might go from viewing merely misogynist and fatalistic content by public figures on YouTube or Tiktok, to consuming anonymous comments on tucked-away, unmoderated forums that explicitly encourage horrific acts.
- Look, I hate women. I think they deserve to be beaten, raped and locked in cages.
- If you look in my old posts you can see me say shit like, ‘I don’t actually hate women.’ Call me a cuck, but at the time I believed that. But yeah. I hate women now. I wish only for a painful death for as many of them as possible, and I will go out of my way from now on to make women feel uncomfortable and make their lives harder in general.
- Mass bloodshed is the only way that sluts and alphas will realize and accept that there are serious consequences for allowing so many males to live their lives in misery.
- Don’t be selfish. Go to an elementary school and kill some children before you commit suicide. Please.
- Going ER is a much better alternative than ending up another forgotten suicide statistic. Helps people identify with a movement that empathizes with their plight.
- If incels go ER, they should target feminists. Gender studies class would be a good location to go ER.
Tim Squirrel, a researcher with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, who’s written papers on incels and online extremism, talked to VICE about incel networks, saying: “I tend to describe it as the world’s worst support group because it’s all people who are validating your worst insecurities. Telling you not only that you’re right, actually everything is bad, but it’s worse than you ever thought and you are doomed from the very start and you might as well just kill yourself. Then sometimes they’ll link to a forum that provides you with detailed instructions on how you can do just that.”
Not all incel forums are equal, and it’s worth reiterating that there are some that are moderated and strive to be healthy places for mutual support. But if you gravitate toward the more extremist, unmoderated platforms, you’ll likely find a cesspool echo chamber of hatred toward women. Solicit constructive advice on how to improve your situation, and get hit with advice to give up…women have rigged the game against you. Want to get an actual woman’s perspective? Good luck, they’re often explicitly banned from these forums. Suggest that maybe misogynistic outlooks and associated behaviors might be one factor contributing to a lack of romantic success? That type of thinking will likely get you scorned or kicked out entirely.
For these men who have Black-Pilled and essentially given up on making any constructive progress toward a better situation, bashing women and celebrating their pain is how you fit in and form some sort of bond with the community…a bond many cling to.
Over the past few decades, it’s not just men’s relationships with women that have declined. Due in large part to the previously mentioned economic factors, young men are living with parents longer, making it harder to make friendships outside the home. Young people are also working longer hours, switching jobs more often, going into the office less, doing less in-person socializing more generally, and spending more of their lives online. These dynamics are worsening for young women too, but statistically, they are disproportionately affecting men.
That’s made even worse by the fact that men tend to have more hang-ups about displaying emotions or vulnerability, which is important to forming close friendships. Research by NYU psychologist Niobe Way has found that young boys are just as likely as girls to show affection and display, as well as recognize, emotions with same-sex friends. But as they get into their mid-to-late teens, there’s a split. Boys become socially conditioned to prize achievement and competition, devalue close male friendships, and hide vulnerability and emotion, lest they perceived as weak or gay. Once again, rapidly shifting socioeconomic conditions are colliding with stubbornly held gender roles to make men feel isolated.
According to surveys by the American Enterprise Institute, the number of US men with at least six close friends fell by more than half between 1990 and 2021, from 55 percent to 27 percent. Furthermore, one in five men in 2021 said they have no close friendships whatsoever—male or female—a five-fold increase from 1990.
However shallow and toxic the connections made on incel forums may be, they can nevertheless be a glass of water in a lonely desert for many of these men. Connecting with and impressing others with shared identity and struggles on these forums might be the only thing that gets certain men up in the morning. Unfortunately, in the years after Elliot Rodger, many of these communities became a vicious cycle of radicalization. The more reasonable and moderate members who were disgusted by the extreme misogyny and glorification of violence bailed, leaving ever-more radical membership. Then those who tipped into real-world violence started coming thick and fast.
* * *
In June of 2014, just a month after Rodger’s rampage, 17-year-old Ben Moynihan, over the course of two months in the UK, began randomly stabbing women on the street with a steak knife, aiming for their hearts. In notes and videos, he complained that women didn’t talk to him and that they were too picky in choosing a boyfriend, so he was still a virgin. He wrote that all women needed to die, and he hoped to gouge their eyes out. He ended up stabbing three women; thankfully all of them survived.
Less fortunate were the victims of 26-year-old Chris Harper-Mercer, who in October of 2015 went into an Oregon community college classroom with several handguns and killed nine people before killing himself amid a shootout with police.
[Survivor testimony clip]
Harper-Mercer left behind a manifesto where he complained that he had no friends, no job, no girlfriend and was still a virgin. He expressed particular anger that he was alone while “alpha thug Black men” get the girls. He mentioned several other mass murderers, but expressed particular admiration for Elliot Rodger, whom he called a god.
Disturbingly, it was later found that the day before the attack, someone had posted on 4Chan an angry looking Pepe the Frog cartoon holding a handgun, along with the message: “Some of you guys are alright. Don’t go to school tomorrow if you are in the Northwest.”
The message was anonymous so it was never definitively tied to Harper-Mercer, but if it was, few of the forum members tried to dissuade him from doing something horrible—quite the opposite in fact. Some gave advice that ended up being very similar to how Harper-Mercer carried out his attack.
- If you are suicidal and hate people then do it.
- Do it. The Chads deserve it. Also shout r9k memes while pumping lead to normies.
- Make the normies pay. Also don’t forget to leave your mark like screaming reeee when you do it
- I suggest you enter a classroom and tell people that you will take them as hostages. Make everyone get in one corner and then open fire. Make sure that there is no way that someone can disarm you. I suggest you carry a knife on your belt as last resort if someone is holding your gun.
- You might want to target a girls school, which is safer because there are no beta males throwing themselves for their rescue. Do not use a shotgun. I would suggest a powerful assault rifle and a pistol or two pistols.
In January of 2017, another man, Christopher Cleary, sat down to his computer while in Utah and posted this to Facebook: “All I wanted was a girlfriend, not a thousand, not a bunch of hoes, not money, none of that. All I wanted was to be loved, yet no one cares about me. I’m 27 years old and I’ve never had a girlfriend before and I’m still a virgin. This is why I’m planning on shooting up a public place soon and being the next mass shooter cause I’m ready to die and all the girls that turned me down is going to make it right by killing as many girls as I see.”
Police were concerned that he might be planning to attack one of the several Women’s Marches in the area planned for the following day, but they managed to track him down and arrest him. He was already on probation for previous convictions on felony charges of stalking, harassing and threatening women. Though he later claimed he was just lonely after seeing many happy people at a basketball game and wasn’t actually planning to kill, he was convicted for an attempted threat of terrorism, and sentenced to up to five years’ prison time.
The following year would bring the most infamous incel murderer since Elliot Rodger, when 25-year-old Alek Minassian rented a large van and plowed through a crowd in downtown Toronto, killing 11 people. Shortly before the attack, he posted on Facebook: “Private (Recruit) Minassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt 4chan please. The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”
Despite trying to provoke police to shoot him, Minassian survived the attack and would later explain that he was a virgin and angry that women ignored or ridiculed him while giving all their affection to “obnoxious brutes.” He told investigators he’d discovered incel message boards in 4Chan in 2014, and claimed he’d even exchanged messages with Elliot Rodger and Chris Harper-Mercer before their respective massacres, though that’s unconfirmed and unlikely. Minassian said he was radicalized in these forums over the years after Rodgers’ attack and began fantasizing about his own ‘Day of Retribution.’ As he told interrogating officers, he hoped to inspire others.
Officer: I’m going to ask you think because it’s important. Ten people died here today, 15 people seriously injured. I think it’s important to ask how you feel about that.
Minassian: I feel like I accomplished my mission.
Unfortunately, he was probably right. Incel forums were immediately full of celebratory sentiment, and quote “Saint Alek Minassian” became the newest folk hero. And the killing just kept coming.
A few months after Minassian’s attack, 40-year-old former high school teacher Scott Paul Beierle entered a yoga studio in Tallahassee, Florida and shot six women, killing two of them, before turning the gun on himself. Beierle had previously posted dozens of YouTube videos and had written more than 100 songs, many with incendiary comments about women and fantasies about torturing and killing them.
He labeled himself a misogynist, which he said began when he was ridiculed by girls in grade school. He also complained about multiple dates where he’d been stood up, and a virginity burden on young men. He said he was lonely, unloved, and unable to attain the women and happiness other men get. And he expressed admiration for, you guessed it, Elliot Rodger.
What also probably won’t shock you by this point is that he had issues with Jews, gays, immigrants and Blacks…with particular vitriol toward interracial couples. And for someone who expressed such frustration at being unable to get women, he had very stringent requirements for what sort of woman he was willing to accept.
[Beierle video clip]
The following year, 2019, a man in Ontario attacked a young woman and her 8-month-old daughter with a knife in a parking lot, severely injuring them both. He later told police that he was attracted to White women but none would have sex with him. So he hated them—especially those in interracial relationships. That day, he said, he was hoping to kill a little White girl. He also said he identified as an incel and had been inspired by Alek Minassian’s attack.
In early 2020, a 17-year-old boy entered a Toronto spa with a sword engraved with the words “thot slayer”—‘thot’ being a derogatory term similar to ‘whore.’ There, he attacked several women while screaming misogynist expletives. He killed the receptionist, a 24-year-old mother, before another woman managed to wrestle the sword away from him after being stabbed repeatedly. Once arrested, a note was found on the attacker that said “Long live the rebellion of the incels.” His computer also showed extensive searches and activity related to incels. He later told police that he’d been inspired by Alek Minassian’s attack, and that he wanted the world to know that “people like us exist and it’s not really fair.” In what appears to be a first for an incel-motivated attack, the perpetrator was charged with terrorism.
Just a month later, police uncovered another a plot by a self-identified incel to shoot up sororities at the University of Ohio. 21-year-old Tres Genco had written hundreds of posts on incel forums in the preceding two years, some that were very dehumanizing of women and praised…wait for it…Elliot Rodger. After a tipoff from someone close to Genco, a police search of his home turned up a collection of several illegal automatic and semi-automatic firearms, boxes of ammo, loaded magazines, body armor and tactical gloves. Police also found notes where Genco described himself as a “socially exiled incel” and expressed plans to “slaughter women out of hatred, jealousy and revenge.”
He stated that his aim was to achieve a kill count of 3,000 on the anniversary of Rodgers’ attack, and he apparently went so far as to join the Army and attend basic training for months to attain the skills he’d need to perpetrate a mass shooting—that was, until he was kicked out for performance and conduct issues. Further investigation found that Genco had done internet searches of how to plan shooting crimes and he had researched sororities at the University of Ohio, even traveling to the school at one point to do reconnaissance. He ultimately pleaded guilty to an attempted hate crime and is awaiting sentencing.
A few months later in Virginia, another likely act of terrorism was avoided when 23-year-old Cole Carini showed up to a hospital with his hand blown off and shrapnel wounds on his face. Contrary to his claim that it was the result of a lawn mower accident, authorities discovered in his home a cache of explosives, rusty nails, a modified pressure cooker and writings suggesting he was trying to build a pressure cooker bomb, like those used in the 2013 Boston Marathon attack. Authorities also found a letter where Carini fantasized about killing “hot cheerleaders” in a shopping mall. “I will be heroic, I will make a statement like Elliot Rodger,” the letter concluded.
Around the same time in Arizona, a 20-year-old man identifying as an incel entered a mall with an AR-15 assault rifle in one hand and his phone in the other to post the attack on social media. There, he opened fire, targeting couples. He critically wounded three people, but luckily his gun jammed before he could kill anyone, though that’s not for lack of desire. Police later reported that he’d spent three years planning a mass casualty event, and he hoped to kill at least 10 people so he could get back at society.
The following year, in 2021, incel violence turned deadly again when 22-year-old Jake Davison killed his mother in Plymouth, England with a shotgun, then proceeded outside on a rampage that killed four more people, including a three-year-old girl and her father, before Davison turned the gun on himself. It was England’s worst mass shooting in a decade.
Davison had kept a YouTube channel where he despaired about his lot in life, his lack of success on dating apps, and how he was ugly, overweight and a virgin, along with many complaints about women themselves, and many talking points straight out of incel ideology.
[Jake Davison clip]
In one video, he expressed understanding for why incels are prone to killing themselves or going on killing sprees, and he referred specifically to Elliot Rodger. It was later discovered that Davison had also been active on incel Reddit forums, where he expressed hate-filled views toward women and discussed mass shootings. Three days before his rampage, he had done internet searches on incel killers and other mass murderers.
Finally, there was the case of Mauricio Garcia, who in May of 2023 took an AR-15-style assault rifle into a Texas mall and killed eight people, including a three-year-old boy, before being killed by police. Pinning down Garcia’s motives proved a bit tricky in the aftermath, as his online trail and private journals revealed a far-right extremist hatred of numerous groups including Asians, Jews, Africans, Muslims, immigrants and Hispanics…despite the fact that Garcia was Hispanic himself. A self-professed neo-Nazi and White supremacist, he even donned large swastika and SS tattoos. But plenty of his vitriol was reserved for women, who he frequently referred to in the most vile terms. He identified himself as an incel and complained about a succession of unrequited crushes and unreciprocated flirtations with women. And you’ll never guess who he expressed admiration for: that’s right, Elliot Rodger.
This list of misogynist incel attackers is exhausting, but unfortunately, it’s not exhaustive. It could go on. Depending on how you define them, misogynist incels have been responsible for killing at least several dozen, possibly hundreds of people. And that death toll rises considerably higher if it’s expanded to include killers with broader misogynist, anti-feminist or male supremacist motives – a list that would include events like the 2011 Norway attacks that killed 77, the 2018 Parkland school shooting that killed 17 and the 2019 Christchurch Mosque shootings that killed 51. And this doesn’t even begin to include far more common violence and killing of women over spurned advances, rebuked street harassment or failure to submit to a partner or admirer’s demands.
Random mass killing, or plots to do so through mass shootings, bombings, or vehicle attacks. Violence carried out by ostensible lone wolfs who are nevertheless connected by an extremist ideology and radicalizing forums. Perpetrators who often leave behind manifestos clearly outlining motives to create terror, inspire others and spark social and political revolutions to address their perceived injustices. If this all sounds an awful lot like terrorism, that’s because it obviously is. But governments, law enforcement and media have been slow to acknowledge it as such.
After Alek Minassian’s attack, and even after he had spoken with police, making his motives and his desire to spark an incel Rebellion crystal clear, Toronto’s police chief made a statement, saying the attack appeared intentional, but did not seem to have been an act of terrorism.
As recently as 2017, a report by the United States government on countering violent extremism laid out terrorist threats in the country, particularly from White supremacists, radical Islamists and anti-government groups. But despite covering a span from 2001 to 2016 – a period that included the deadly attacks by Gorge Sodini, Elliot Rodger and Chris Harper-Mercer – it made no mention of misogynist extremism; a puzzling omission, given that it did see fit to mention threats from environmentalist and animal rights extremists, despite there being no known deadly attacks by those groups over that period.
Other entities are starting to wake up to the threat though. A 2020 report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service cited gender-driven violence as an emerging source of violent extremism. That same year, the perpetrator in the Toronto spa stabbing attack was charged, and later convicted of, committing a terrorist act. It’s thought to be the first-ever incel-related incident to bring a terrorism charge.
Later that year, a 22-year-old man in Scotland, who had been fixated on Elliot Rodger and done online research on incel ideology and other mass murderers, went on trial after being arrested for amassing a collection of weapons, including a high-powered crossbow and machete. Police suspected he was planning a killing spree, and he was convicted under the country’s Terrorism Act of possessing weapons for terrorist purposes.
Also in 2020, the state of Texas released a terrorism threat assessment that explicitly mentioned incels. They constitute “an emerging domestic terrorism threat as current adherents demonstrate marked acts or threats of violence in furtherance of their social grievance,” the report read. “Once viewed as a criminal threat by many law enforcement authorities, Incels are now seen as a growing domestic terrorism concern due to the ideological nature of recent incel attacks internationally, nationwide, and in Texas.”
It added that “this particular threat could soon match, or potentially eclipse, the level of lethalness demonstrated by other domestic terrorism types.”
Labeling these attacks terrorism is a start in acknowledging the seriousness of the situation, to devoting adequate law enforcement and intelligence resources, and recognizing that a succession of ostensible ‘lone wolf’ attacks has in fact been fueled by an underlying ideology and radicalizing ecosystem. But of course, that’s only the beginning of addressing the underlying causes of this violence. With such deep-seeded cultural attitudes and socioeconomic conditions providing fertile ground from which misogynist incels sprout, the problem defies simple solutions.
One start would be better understanding and finding interventions on the forums where much of the radicalization takes place. One study titled “The Evolution of the Manosphere Across the Web” analyzed tens of millions of posts across dozens of forums over more than a decade, and found that speech continues to get more toxic and more misogynistic. And membership in forums for milder groups like pickup artists and men’s rights activists continues to migrate at an accelerating pace toward more extremist incel forums.
But taking a sledgehammer to these forums is likely counterproductive. In fact, there have been a number of forums on Reddit and other platforms that have been shut down for their violent and hateful misogynist rhetoric, but it seems this only served to push members onto even more extreme, unmoderated platforms, and the rhetoric became even worse.
Furthermore, it’s important to remember that the most vitriolic comments on incel forums aren’t necessarily indicative of all members’ attitudes. And closing these forums might risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. One survey of more than 300 people identifying as incels found that incel forums served some positive, cathartic functions. 57% said these forums made them feel less lonely, 70% said it gave a sense of belonging and 75% said it gave them a feeling of being understood. For men that are otherwise completely isolated, these forums can provide a lifeline.
Additionally, 79 percent in the same survey said they rejected violence, and despite perceptions of seemingly ubiquitous praise for Elliot Rodger, Alek Minassian or Chris Harper-Mercer on these forums, only about one in ten of those surveyed expressed admiration for the three killers.
Intelligence experts have advocated law enforcement agencies building links with moderators and rank-and-file members of incel forums to serve as the first line of defense against violence. Those who are frequently active in these platforms and understand the membership can be a valuable asset in recognizing red flags in potentially violent members.
But that’s only scratching the surface. The same survey of incels found that 95 percent of those surveyed believed in the Black Pill, and 71 percent believed their involuntary celibacy was irreparably permanent. Respondents also widely expressed dim views of women, with 77 percent saying they find women to be self-centered, 78 percent saying they’re manipulative, and 71 percent believing women care only about appearances when considering romantic partners.
On a societal level, 90 percent believed western society is more favorable to women than men, 68 percent agreed feminism is responsible for the state of relationships today, and 66 percent agreed that equality between men and women has not been good for me. So one measure might be education and to try chipping away at some of these perceptions. Indeed, some of the most common beliefs that misogynist incels hold—and now seem to take for granted as established truth—are actually completely bunk.
Like the 80/20 principle for instance, which says that 80 percent of the women are shacking up with the top 20 percent of men? Yeah, there’s really nothing to scientifically validate that. Once source ostensibly validating this idea is dating app data indicating that a small proportion of male users on apps like Tinder get a disproportionate share of the matches – something in the vicinity of 80 percent of matches for 20 percent of the male users. But you have to remember that dating app matches don’t reflect actual dating and sexual outcomes.
Remember that 2019 survey I mentioned in the last episode, which found that in the decade after the Global Financial Crisis, the proportion of men between 18 and 30 who reported having no sex in the past year nearly tripled from 10 percent to 28 percent? Many in the Manosphere pounced on that data as validation for the idea that the lion’s share of women were sleeping in a rotation with a relatively small pool of top men—the Chads. Or to use misogynist incel terminology, they were riding the ‘cock carousel.”
In truth though, everyone is having less sex than in the past—and sociologists have suggested a number of possible reasons. Social media and easier electronic communication methods have reduced in-person interaction of any kind. Young people are living with parents longer. Alcohol consumption is decreasing with every generation. Pornography has become very easily accessible. Vastly improved video game quality and video streaming sites are perhaps pre-occupying people more than in the past. Wealth inequality and stagnating wages that haven’t kept up with inflation for many people are making dating and in-person meeting generally less affordable.
Whatever the reason, young people—men and women—are less sexually active than in the past. And the idea that women have become hyper-promiscuous doesn’t hold water. In that same survey, a higher proportion of men reported having two or more sexual partners within the past year. But 88 percent of all respondents reported having sex with zero or only one partner over the preceding year. The majority of people having sex were doing so within a single long-term relationship. There is a minority of promiscuous men and women, but they’re mostly hooking up with each other. There was nothing in the data to validate the idea that a large majority of women are sleeping with a small minority of men.
And the idea that women are too picky and won’t give the time of day to unattractive men? Studies have consistently shown that men care more about looks than women do when it comes to choosing a romantic partner. And while it is true than women on average care more about a potential partners’ income than men do, they also tend to put a much higher premium on intelligence, emotional connection and personality when choosing romantic partners.
Also critical to reining in misogynist Inceldom and the violence associated with it, is mental health intervention. One survey of incel forum users found that 95 percent self-reported having depression, and 93 percent anxiety – more than triple the rate of the general population. Unchecked depression can create a vicious cycle, hindering constructive steps toward better romantic outcomes, and in turn yielding more fatalistic Black Pill thinking, and worsening depression even further. Furthermore, surveys show that incels tend to be more sensitive to rejection than the general population, have lower self-esteem, and express that their sense of self-worth is more dependent on their relationships—traits quite evident in the writings of George Sodini and Elliot Rodger. Better access to, and less stigmatization around mental health resources isn’t a silver bullet, but it is part of the puzzle.
Finally, it would probably help if there was wider societal recognition of socioeconomic trends and how they play into deeply entrenched culture and attitudes. A loss of elevated status and economic dominance for men in Western societies, particularly White men, was an inevitable development—and not one likely to elicit much sympathy from other groups who’ve been disadvantaged throughout history. That’s completely understandable. But it is a real issue that, as we’ve seen over the past two episodes, has very real consequences for everyone.
Still-widely held beliefs about traditional gender roles and cultural attitudes toward the definition of masculinity and male success remain stubbornly rooted. Meanwhile, income inequality and the perils of late capitalism are making it harder for more and more men to live up to societal expectations and what our culture says constitutes a successful, or even adequate man. Scoffing at these men’s modern struggles may only add to a sense of grievance and push these communities deeper into self-radicalizing echo chambers.
And the male loneliness epidemic is real. For a raft of reasons, men are having less intimate companionship than they did in the past, and less than human beings are biologically wired to have. And that’s even before you consider countries like China and India with severe gender imbalances. Thanks to decades of sex-selective abortion and a cultural preference for boys, there are tens of millions of surplus men in the world who are demographically pre-destined to lifelong bachelorhood. We’ll cover that more on a future episode. Counter-terrorism experts have indeed expressed concern at growing anti-feminist movements in East Asia, and fear misogynist incel ideology may have fertile ground to spread there.
Of course, whatever real struggles men may have doesn’t justify the ideology of misogynist Inceldom – an ideology built mostly on anecdote, pseudoscience and misguided intuition powered by aggrieved entitlement and the need for a scapegoat in bad situations. It’s one thing to recognize and sympathize with real struggles many men are going through. It’s another to try appeasing those with hopelessly toxic and hateful worldviews.
These problems need more research, and it isn’t clear exactly what the solutions are yet. But it is clear what the solution isn’t: trying to reverse the tide to a time when economic and social necessity all but forced women into subservience to male partners.
As we’ll continue to see in this series, social movements unfortunately almost always come at a cost—and women’s advancement is no exception. Chipping away at repressive social norms and entrenched power structures inevitably provokes resistance from the incumbents—and that resistance can become deadly and outright catastrophic.
But in the scheme of history, this reactionary pushback is more often a speed bump than a roadblock. Terrorists that try to impede social progress may inflict devastating personal tragedies in the short term, but in the long term, they often only hasten that progress and underscore its importance.
On the 30th anniversary of Marc Lepine’s anti-feminist massacre in Montreal, CBC News spoke with Mary Wells, a woman who had earned an engineering degree in Canada a few years before the attack, and later went on to become the dean of Engineering and Physical Science at a major Canadian university. Looking back on the aftermath of the attack, she said, “You know, that person wanted to get rid of women in engineering … In fact, the opposite occurred. It really galvanized some people to do some very proactive things around ensuring that women would be welcomed — not only included, but welcomed — into the engineering profession.”
At the time of the massacre in 1989, women made up just 12 percent of the undergraduate engineering student population in Canada. Today, that proportion has more than doubled to nearly 25 percent.
Though Marc Lepine may still be a folk hero to some, his legacy has overwhelmingly been one of highlighting and galvanizing the causes he was so opposed to. One hopes that in the future, the other more recent misogynist terrorists will share that same legacy.
If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts or is in emotional distress, you can call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or visit their website at 988lifeline.org. 988 provides 24/7 free and confidential support, as well as prevention and crisis resources. Again, that’s 988 by phone, or 988lifeline.org online.
This episode was based on numerous sources. Some of the most notable were the book Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates and The Incel Rebellion by Lisa Sugiura, as well as a raft of academic studies. For links to those and other sources we used, go to our website at manmadecatastrophes.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.
Sources
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