Women-hating ‘incels’ in the United States say they’re plotting World War III

A disturbing group is calling for World War III so men can “take back society” from “feminism and degeneracy”

Twisted incels in the United States have called for World War III so men can “take back society” from “feminism and degeneracy”, troubling posts online show.

The term “incel” means involuntary celibate and refers to a dark online community of mostly young male virgins who despise women and worship mass murderers, the US Sun reports.

Internet forums dedicated to the troubled thoughts of these individuals often contain misogyny, racism and openly discuss acts of violence against women.

Incel-related violence has been linked to at least 53 deaths in the US in recent years, statistics show, and one of the most popular incel forums, some members of the community have called for wide-scale bloodshed to help “reset” society.

“It’s no secret that western society (so far, it’s likely that other the rest of the world will be feminist soon as well [sic]) has been ruined by feminism and all sorts of degeneracy,” one incel recently posted to a forum.

Elliot Rodger is a martyr for the incel community. He killed six people and injured 14 in a 2014 mass shooting before taking his own life

“Men, especially straight white men are vilified and get no respect. Everything is blamed on the ‘evil’ patriarchy. Lots of men are brainwashed into believe [sic] the whole women being oppressed narrative.”

The user continued that women are “ungrateful to men” who “build and made the US and in general the west so powerful.”

“And things will only get worse. We have had it too easy in the west so people in the past few decades … became focused on dumb s**t like feminism.

“We need real problems, maybe WW3 or something else that is devastating so people grow up and appreciate men again.”

A host of other incels agreed, with some fantasising how such a war would play out.

“Don’t worry, it’ll happen,” one wrote. “Mad max style s**t is on its way. I for one look forward to it. Here in Canada, most people are p**sies so fighting to the death will be too easy.”

Incels on the rise

The troubling remarks come as experts warn that inceldom is on the rise, particularly in the US, with more lonely young men subscribing to the group’s twisted beliefs than ever before.

Dr. Josh Roose, a Senior Research Fellow at Deakin University in Australia, told The Sun that the concerning increase can be attributed to a number of factors, including the “deepening of socio-economic inequality” in Western society and the emergence of social media.

“The emergence of Incel ideological currents, which may be understood as part of a broader movement (male supremacism), has paralleled the emergence of the alt- and far-right,” Roose said.

Tres Genco, 21, was arrested this week. He plotted to slaughter up to 3,000 sorority girls out of “hatred, jealousy and revenge” at an unnamed university, prosecutors claim

He added that websites such as 4Chan, Reddit, and YouTube have been in the development of these communities.

“Instagram and Tinder [also] play an unwitting role in these developments,” Roose added. “To Incels, the platforms substantiate their claims that women are only interested in attractive men.”

Michael Haplin, an assistant professor of Sociology at Dalhousie University, agreed, adding: “Take Tinder for instance. On Tinder, it tends to be very difficult for men who are short to get matches.

“This is one of the things incels talk about, it’s called ‘lookism’, and they believe – in a distorted way – that they’re victimised by it.”

The ‘black pill’

The incel community tends to be self-reinforcing and self-radicalising, with members believing that their looks or personal traits have condemned them to a lifetime of loneliness.

Incels have also developed elaborate and deeply misogynistic theories to blame others for their plight, centred on the idea that women are stupid, shallow-minded, and intrinsically cruel.

They sometimes call women “sluts” or “whores” but most commonly refer to them as “femoids,” “foids” or even “female humanoid organisms” — in other words, not quite human.

This radical ideology is often referred to as “black pill” thinking.

“Some incels have moved beyond ‘red pill’ thinking, which in their vernacular, enables them to see the harsh truth of the world (as opposed to ‘blue pill’ blissful ignorance),” Roose explains.

“Black Pill thinking is fatalistic. Incels embracing ‘black pill’ thinking assert that there is no possibility of circumventing female prejudice attached to physical attractiveness (lookism) and status.”

At the top of the incel hierarchy are the most attractive men, who are referred to as “Chads.”

Incels believe that roughly 20 per cent of the population is made up of Chads but about 80 per cent of women are only interested in men of this class.

Murderers and criminals are often canonised by incels online. One of the incels on the forum had an avatar picture of Richard Lopez – a suicidal stalker obsessed with singer Bjork

“Stacy,” the incel term for the most attractive women, will only consent to sex with Chad, as the thinking goes.

The bottom 20 per cent of women will consent to sex with the vast majority of men who fall somewhere in the middle of the attractiveness tier – referred to as “normies” – while incels are at the bottom of the pile, and therefore destined for a life of sexless solitude.

When quizzed as to why incels only vilify women rather than “Chads”, Haplin explained: “Part of the reason is that they admire Chads, they want to be the Chads, and they acknowledge that.

“They want what Chads have which is, what they deem to be, unlimited sexual access to women.

“The reason that they hate women is that they see them as the ones who could end or resolve their incel status.”

‘Incredibly dangerous’

Roose calls the incel way of thinking “incredibly dangerous”, and says anti-women extremism needs to be taken seriously.

Back in May of this year, the Texas Department of Public Safety released a report that designated incels “an emerging domestic terrorism threat.”

While the majority of incels are nonviolent, Roose says a “minority of incels actively target women in online forums for harassment, abuse and threats of violence.”

He adds an incel’s deep-seated misogyny can also shape their actions both online and offline.

“We have seen a dramatic escalation in Incel-related attacks targeting women, which some studies suggest have killed over 50 women in the past decade.

“Incel manifestos, in particular, reveal the devastating potential should they be successful in enacting even a small portion of their plans.”

Elliot Roger: the incel martyr

In May 2014, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured 14 in a stabbing and shooting spree in Isla Vista, California before turning the gun on himself.

The son of a Hollywood filmmaker, Rodger posted a “retribution” video to YouTube and emailed a manifesto to more than two dozen people he knew before carrying out the massacre, calling for a “war on women.”

The 141-page document details his life of privilege, his upbringing, his mental health, and his deep-rooted loathing of women, fuelled by an intense frustration over his virginity.

Within it, he described himself as the “ideal magnificent gentleman” and said he couldn’t comprehend why a woman would not want to have sex with him.

Elliot Rodger called for a ‘war on women’

“All I had ever wanted was to love women, but their behaviour has only earned my hatred,” he wrote. “I want to have sex with them, and make them feel good, but they would be disgusted at the prospect. They have no sexual attraction towards me.”

He planned his murderous rampage as a “Day of Retribution” and said he had “no choice but to exact revenge on the society” that had “denied” him sex and love.

He added that he planned to target sorority members at his college who had been deemed the “hottest”, and who were the “kind of girls I’ve always desired but was never able to have.

In closing, he wrote: “I am the true victim in all of this. I am the good guy.”

Rodger never referred to himself as an incel in the manifesto, but the members of the community have since fastened upon the document.

The gunman is viewed as a hero among some incels, with his actions even inspiring similar attacks and plots in the years afterwards.

Copycats

The most infamous mass shooting inspired by Rodger’s actions was carried out by Alek Minassian, 25, who killed 10 people when he ploughed through pedestrians in a rented van in Toronto, Canada in April 2018.

In a disturbing Facebook post, before the massacre, Minassian said an “Incel Rebellion has begun” while also praising Rodger as a “Supreme Gentlemen.”

He later investigators he had set out to kill as many people as possible and that he drew inspiration from both Rodger and from the wider incel community.

Asked by investigators how he felt about the harm he had caused, the attacker replied: “I feel like I accomplished my mission”.

Earlier this week, Rodger once again emerged as the inspiration behind a mass casualty plot, this time in Ohio, that was foiled by police before any harm was caused.

Tres Genco, 21, plotted to slaughter up to 3,000 sorority girls out of “hatred, jealousy and revenge” at an unnamed university, prosecutors claim.

Genco allegedly said that carried out surveillance on sororities and other college buildings, and penned a sick manifesto detailing how he planned to carry out the shooting.

The twisted plot came after years of him posting on incel message boards and idolising Rodger, prosecutors said.

In one passage of his manifesto, Genco claimed to have sprayed” some foids and couples” with orange juice and a water gun.

Genco allegedly compared his “extremely empowering action” to Rodger.

The most infamous mass shooting inspired by Rodger’s actions was carried out by Alek Minassian (above) in Toronto in 2018.

Rodger also once sprayed orange juice on students before carrying out his own sickening rampage.

Haplin says there is a number among the incel community who “take a joy” in seeing those who aren’t incels murdered, and they’re “happy” when an assailant like Rodger carries out an attack.

What drives them to commit violent acts themselves, Haplin says, is that “these type of people … probably have a need for attention themselves.”

Rising trend

Acts of “male supremacist violence” are increasing across the spectrum, Roose says, including among men’s rights activist groups.

“The factors driving the re-emergence of the far-right and conspiracy movements are the same driving the increase in individuals attracted to inceldom,” he explains.

“Economic decline, the erosion of traditional gender-based roles, a sense of powerlessness and victimhood are combining with ready access to online communities who just a decade or two ago would have never found one another.

“These online environments are highly performative and have a force multiplier effect on extremist views.”

Similarly to Roose, former New York Times journalist Andrew L. Yarrow describes millennial men as the “new lost boys” in his book, Man Out: Men on the Sidelines of American Life.

In the book, Yarrow points out that as many as one in three Americans aged between 18 and 34 are either unemployed, living at home, or living near or at the poverty line.

Women, meanwhile, are surging ahead, out-enrolling men in universities and colleges across the country.

The “uncertainty” about their place in the world is leading men to spiking levels of anxiety and depression, Yarrow says.

It is from this profound sense of isolation and uncertainty that extremist views can often be adopted, both Roose and Haplin say.

‘Nothing will stop threat’

The threat incels pose will likely never go away entirely, Roose believes.

“Every time an online forum is shut down, those dedicated to these communities reorganise and regroup elsewhere,” he said.

However, the group being designated a domestic terror threat “should mean that those most likely to conduct some form of a terrorist act are on the radar of authorities and are consequently prevented from such acts if they start to plan or prepare for them.”

Aspiring mass-murderer Tres Genco was arrested in Ohio on Wednesday

More broadly speaking, Roose says politicians across the partisan divide must come together pass legislation that specifically and proactively targets online abuse and harassment of women.

“To this end, social media companies need to be far more proactive in preventing the publication of abuse, harassment, and threats on their platforms,” he said.

Haplin also warned that he expects incel-linked acts of violence to become more common in the years ahead, particularly after a global pandemic, which drove more people online and forced some to spend more time alone.

“I fully expect it to become more common,” he said. “We’ve been looking at a number of discussion boards for quite a while and the number of people who are very comfortable endorsing or celebrating violence is much higher than expected.”

This story was originally published in the US Sun and has been reproduced with permission