Before allegedly killing 10 people with a van in Toronto, Alek Minassian appeared to have posted a message on Facebook that linked him to a toxic online community of misogynists that has become the source of a growing pattern of violence.
The Facebook post, which authorities who spoke with NBC News believe came from Minassian, links Minassian to an online community known as incels, short for involuntary celibates. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also reported that Facebook confirmed the authenticity of the post.
Self-described incels congregate mostly online, meeting in forums and message boards like Reddit and 4chan, and its offshoot site 8chan, to discuss their hopelessness with women in posts that are peppered with racist and misogynistic rants. Chads are incel-speak for good-looking men, who incels believe cant be one of them. Stacys are the women who find Chads attractive.
The Facebook message also refers admiringly to Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in Isla Vista, California, in 2014, and left behind a manifesto and videos detailing his sexual frustration as the motivation for his violence.
Rodger has since emerged as a source of inspiration among the incel community.
Private (Recruit) Minassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt 4chan please. C23249161. The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger! Minassian allegedly posted.
Minassians post spread quickly among the incel community, many of whom rushed to embrace him.
I hope this guy wrote a manifesto because he could be our next new saint, one poster wrote on incel.me, a forum where incels congregate.
While some posters questioned whether Minassian, 25, was a fakecel the term for someone whose average looks disqualifies him from community membership most hailed him as a hero of the movement.
Spread that name, speak of his sacrifice for our cause, worship him for he gave his life for our future, one poster wrote.
Another poster wondered whether Minassian might have been acting on his own March call to action for incels to commit mass murder and serial rapes, a post on incels.me which has since been removed.
I want to see some mass food poisoning deaths, maybe a pipe bomb or two, or hopefully somebody finally uses a f---ing truck to just ram down [women] during a school parade or something, mix it up a little, wrote BlkPillPres, whose username is a nod to the black pill, lingo in the incel community for coming to the realization that a woman will never have sex with them.
Violence perpetrated by men connected to misogynistic online communities has become systemic enough to warrant attention from organizations that track hate groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center added misogynistic organizations to their list of hate groups for the first time this year.
Heidi Beirich, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Centers Intelligence Project, said that the incel community mostly consists of aggrieved young men, who have found a natural home on 4chan and darker parts of Reddit.
Theyre young, frustrated white males in their late teens into their early twenties who are having a hard time adjusting to adulthood. Theyre the same kinds of people you find in white supremacy writ large, Beirich said. They have grievances about the world theyve placed onto women and black people.
are incels a cult? it certainly sounds like one. ---
