Toronto man in incel-inspired murder case sentenced to life in prison: Justice Suhail Akhtar meted out an adult life sentence to the man who was just 17 years old when he murdered one woman and attempted to kill another using a sword Author: Freeze, Colin An Ontario judge denounced “savagery motivated by misogyny” as he meted out an adult life sentence against a Toronto man who was just 17 years old when he murdered one woman and attempted to kill another one. In a Toronto courtroom on Tuesday, Justice Suhail Akhtar said the stiffest sentence possible was appropriate in the case because the accused, now 21, is to be considered fully blameworthy for the sword attack that he planned for months before carrying it out while still a teenager. “I must find that an adult sentence should be imposed,” said Judge Akhtar in Ontario Superior Court, in rejecting defence arguments for a lighter youth sentence. During Tuesday’s sentencing ruling, the judge said video evidence showed that the accused had “butchered” a woman he selected at random, and that he tried to do the same to a second woman who thwarted his attack. The case set Canadian legal precedents in July when Judge Akhtar ruled that the murder and attempted murder crimes that the accused had pleaded guilty to in 2022 were also to be considered criminal acts of terrorism. The sword attack had been calculated to spread fear among women, and the earlier ruling marked the first time that a court has concluded that online communities that advocate for the killing of women meet the legal definition of terrorist groups. During Tuesday’s sentencing ruling, the judge stressed again how the offender had immersed himself in a violent internet culture for months before unleashing his attack. And also how today, following nearly four years of imprisonment, he is now claiming that he was merely “brainwashed” by others. “Rather than accept responsibility, he blames the incel community and culture,” Judge Akhtar ruled during Tuesday’s sentencing. The man, now 21, belonged to an online community of so-called incels, or “involuntarily celibate” men, who blame women for their inability to find sexual partners. Nearly four years ago, on Feb. 24, 2020, the young man – who under the Youth Criminal Justice Act cannot be named because he was 17 when the killing occurred – donned a dark coat that concealed a sword, then entered a North Toronto massage parlour. The court heard that he immediately began slashing at the first woman he saw. Ashley Noelle Arzaga, a 24-year-old single mother who was working at the reception desk, was stabbed 42 times. She bled to death. A second woman in the building tried to help Ms. Arzaga and was also stabbed. She managed to wrest the weapon from the teenager and incapacitate him. When police and paramedics arrived on the scene, the young man told them that he had attacked the women because he was part of a female-hating online group. “I wanted to kill everybody in the building and I’m happy I got one,” he said during his arrest. Authorities later found a handwritten note in his front-left coat pocket. It said, “Long Live The Incel Rebellion.” The man pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and attempted murder during a 2022 hearing. In July, Judge Akhtar ruled he was guilty of additional Criminal Code offences related to terrorism, because he had admitted he was associated with incels, and because the crime was calculated to spread fear among women. The killer “was motivated by the incel ideology and wished to send a message to society that incels were prepared to kill and commit violence on the public in furtherance of their ideological beliefs,” Justice Akhtar wrote in July. During Tuesday’s sentencing hearing the judge had to determine whether the man would be considered a youth or an adult. If he were considered a youth, he could legally only receive a sentence of up to 10 years. But instead he was sentenced as an adult, where the the minimum is life imprisonment and no possibility of parole for 10 years. The Crown attorneys prosecuting the case argued in an October sentencing hearing that the man should be sentenced as an adult. Months of premeditation went into the attack, Crown attorney Chikeziri Igwe said at the time, telling the court that “he did not act on a whim.” Defence lawyer Monte MacGregor countered in that hearing that his client deserved a youth sentence because he was a “friendless” and “susceptible and weak” teen who fell victim to a virulent ideology circulating online. Law-enforcement agencies are increasingly concerned about the way violent extremism is spreading online, in some cases leading followers to strike targets at random. This month, Nathaniel Veltman, a 22-year-old white nationalist, was convicted of multiple counts of murder by a Windsor, Ont., jury. In that case, the jury found Mr. Veltman had spent weeks planning an attack in which he used a pickup truck to kill several members of a Muslim family. During Mr. Veltman’s coming sentencing hearing, Justice Renee Pomerance is expected to rule on terrorism motivation charges, which are still pending. Subject: Criminal sentences; Court hearings & proceedings; Virtual communities; Women; Murders & murder attempts; Imprisonment; Stabbings URL: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article- toronto-man-incel-sword-attack-sentencing/ — Title: Toronto man in incel-inspired murder case sentenced to life in prison: Justice Suhail Akhtar meted out an adult life sentence to the man who was just 17 years old when he murdered one woman and attempted to kill another using a sword Publication date: Nov 28, 2023 Copyright: Copyright The Globe and Mail Nov 28, 2023 Last updated: 2023-11-28 Toronto incel to be sentenced for deadly 2020 sword attack: Youth already convicted of terrorism in groundbreaking case could get life in prison for the spa attack where he slashed two women, killing one Author: Freeze, Colin A Toronto man convicted of a killing that a court found was an act of misogynistic terrorism is to learn Tuesday whether being a youth at the time of the crime will lessen his time in prison, or whether he will receive an adult life sentence. The young man’s conviction in Ontario Superior Court was the first time in Canada that a court had concluded that online communities that advocate for the killing of women meet the legal definition of terrorist groups. The man, now 21, belonged to an online community of so-called incels, or “involuntarily celibate” men, who blame women for their inability to find sexual partners. Nearly four years ago, on Feb. 24, 2020, the young man – who under the Youth Criminal Justice Act cannot be named because he was 17 when the killing occurred – donned a dark coat that concealed a sword, then entered a North Toronto massage parlour. The court heard that he immediately began slashing at the first woman he saw. Ashley Noelle Arzaga, a 24-year-old single mother who was working at the reception desk, was stabbed 42 times. She bled to death. A second woman in the building tried to help Ms. Arzaga and was also stabbed. She managed to wrest the weapon from the teenager and incapacitate him. When police and paramedics arrived on the scene, the young man told them that he had attacked the women because he was part of a female-hating online group. “I wanted to kill everybody in the building and I’m happy I got one,” he said during his arrest. Authorities later found a handwritten note in his front-left coat pocket. It said, “Long Live The Incel Rebellion.” The man pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and attempted murder during a 2022 hearing. In July, Justice Suhail Akhtar ruled he was guilty of additional Criminal Code offences related to terrorism, because he had admitted he was associated with incels, and because the crime was calculated to spread fear among women. The killer “was motivated by the incel ideology and wished to send a message to society that incels were prepared to kill and commit violence on the public in furtherance of their ideological beliefs,” Justice Akhtar wrote. Justice Akhtar is expected to rule on the young man’s sentence on Tuesday. The judge must first determine whether the man will be considered a youth or an adult. If he is considered a youth, he can legally only receive a sentence of up to 10 years. But if he is sentenced as an adult, the minimum is life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for 25 years. For that stiffer sentence to be imposed, the court would have to conclude that the young man’s moral blameworthiness is not diminished by his young age. This is why the terrorism determination may matter: the court could take it into account when deciding whether he qualifies as an adult. The Crown attorneys prosecuting the case argued in an October sentencing hearing that the man should be sentenced as an adult. Months of premeditation went into the attack, Crown attorney Chikeziri Igwe said at the time, telling the court that “he did not act on a whim.” Defence lawyer Monte MacGregor countered in that hearing that his client deserved a youth sentence because he was a “friendless” and “susceptible and weak” teen who fell victim to a virulent ideology circulating online. Law-enforcement agencies are increasingly concerned about the way violent extremism is spreading online, in some cases leading followers to strike targets at random. This month, Nathaniel Veltman, a 22-year-old white nationalist, was convicted of multiple counts of murder by a Windsor, Ont., jury. In that case, the jury found Mr. Veltman had spent weeks planning an attack in which he used a pickup truck to kill several members of a Muslim family. During Mr. Veltman’s coming sentencing hearing, Justice Renee Pomerance is expected to rule on terrorism motivation charges, which are still pending. Subject: Criminal sentences; Virtual communities; Women; Murders & murder attempts; Stabbings URL: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article- toronto-incel-to-be-sentenced-for-deadly-2020- sword-attack/ — Title: Toronto incel to be sentenced for deadly 2020 sword attack: Youth already convicted of terrorism in groundbreaking case could get life in prison for the spa attack where he slashed two women, killing one Publication date: Nov 27, 2023 Copyright: Copyright The Globe and Mail Nov 27, 2023 Last updated: 2023-11-28 Toronto man who killed a woman in an act of misogynist terror apologizes to family: Suspect, 17 at time of crime, tells court during sentencing hearing that he is no longer an ‘incel’ and that he now knows ‘life is so much more than internet negativity’ Author: Freeze, Colin A Toronto man convicted of being a terrorist has apologized to the daughter of a woman he targeted at random and slashed to death with a sword during a misogyny-motivated murder in 2020. “To the little girl I orphaned, I am sorry for taking your mother away and effectively destroying the rest of your childhood,” said the bearded young man on Thursday, reading from a handwritten statement on looseleaf paper in Toronto’s Ontario Superior Court. The offender, who cannot be named because he was 17 at the time of his crime, was asked to account for his actions at a sentencing hearing. He haltingly delivered three minutes of remarks. “I don’t exactly know how to explain away my actions that day. To be honest, I can’t,” he said, while facing friends and family members of 24-year-old Ashley Arzaga. The single mother was slain by the offender while she was working as a receptionist at a Toronto massage parlour in February, 2020. The Toronto man has already admitted he attacked her because of his affiliation with incels – an online community that counsels its members to commit femicide and other acts of violence against women. The man, 21, said he now renounces that mindset. “I do not hate women or anyone,” he said. “I’ve come to realize life is so much more than internet negativity.” His case amounts to a historic prosecution. The young man pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder last year. In June, a related ruling in his case marked the first time a Canadian court has ruled that violence inspired by an ideological hatred of women meets the legal threshold of terrorism. The online community of incels, or involuntary celibates, claim to be unable to find sexual partners. Its members blame women for this, and their discussions often veer into misogyny and violence. The sentencing hearing left both the Crown and defence lawyers emotional as they recounted circumstances of the violent crimes. Prosecutor Chikeziri Igwe said the Crown is seeking a life sentence. He stressed that the offender spent months planning an attack to instill fear in women before launching into violence by using a 17-inch sword in a “brutal, horrific and savage” attack. “He did not act on a whim,” Mr. Igwe told the court, saying that evidence showed the man had spent months online researching incel ideology. Defence lawyer Monte MacGregor urged a much lighter sentence, one that would amount to only a few more years in jail. He painted a picture of an offender who lashed out after growing up as a latchkey teenager with limited intellect and a variety of mental-health disorders. “He lived virtually alone in the basement of his father’s house,” said Mr. MacGregor. Calling his client “friendless” and “susceptible and weak,” he noted neither of the young man’s parents attended the sentencing proceeding. The range of potential sentences is large. The Crown wants to sentence the accused as an adult, meaning an automatic life sentence without eligibility for parole until he serves the equivalent of 10 years in prison. The defence argues he should be sentenced as a youth, meaning a maximum 10 years in prison with early release provisions and credit for time served. The offender has also been convicted of attempted murder because the 2020 attack was thwarted by a second victim in the massage parlour who was injured as she wrestled the sword away from the attacker. The woman appeared in court Thursday to face him. “I’m not a victim,” she told the court. “I’m a survivor.” Prosecutors read victim-impact statements from family members of Ms. Arzaga. “The most emotionally draining part of everything is watching my niece celebrate Mother’s Day at the cemetery,” wrote one of the slain woman’s sisters. Another sister wrote that “hearing her daughter call every night asking for her mom, and telling her her mom isn’t coming home, broke my heart.” The woman’s siblings were not identified in court. A publication ban covers the name of the second victim. Justice Suhail Akhtar has reserved his sentencing decision until Nov. 28. Subject: Criminal sentences; Violence; Virtual communities; Misogyny; Women; Murders & murder attempts URL: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article- toronto-man-terrorist-incel-trial/ — Title: Toronto man who killed a woman in an act of misogynist terror apologizes to family: Suspect, 17 at time of crime, tells court during sentencing hearing that he is no longer an ‘incel’ and that he now knows ‘life is so much more than internet negativity’ Publication date: Oct 12, 2023 Copyright: Copyright The Globe and Mail Oct 12, 2023 Last updated: 2023-10-13 Canada’s terrorism laws have finally started expanding their definition: A precedent-setting court ruling about an incel-motivated homicide acknowledges the reality that terrorism is not only perpetrated by Islamist extremists Author: Davis, Jessica Jessica Davis is the president of Insight Threat Intelligence and the author of Illicit Money: Financing Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century. On June 6, in a landmark ruling, a young man who killed one woman and injured another three years ago in a Toronto massage parlour was found guilty of terrorism. The man admitted that he’d been motivated to commit these acts of violence by the “incel” movement: a loose collection of people, primarily men, who interact online and share frustrations about a lack of access to sex, relationships, women, and social status. The Ontario Superior Court judge in the case found that the man’s actions met the definition of terrorist activity under the Criminal Code. While the judge has yet to release his reasons, this attack is likely a case of ideologically motivated violent extremism which, along with political or religious motivations, is one of the three possible terrorist motivations set out in the Criminal Code. To date, however, Canada’s terrorism laws have been disproportionately applied to one particular kind of violence: the kind that is motivated by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. This violence is often referred to as religiously motivated, although there are political and ideological components to it. As I’ve previously argued, this selective application of our terrorism laws is a problem because other types of violence, including misogynistic and racially motivated violence, have been getting a free pass in Canada, despite being responsible for more than 50 deaths in Canada and the United States in recent years – far more than other forms of terrorism. These attacks have been categorized primarily as hate crimes, rather than part of a broader political movement intended to reshape Canadian society through violence. Some have argued that this type of violence doesn’t rise to the level of terrorism, and that it should be treated like a hate crime because it is disorganized or small-scale, or because they fail to see how this violence is an effort to intimidate a segment of the public. This myopic view fails to acknowledge that many different segments of society can be targeted by extremist violence. Our terrorism laws are intended to do two things: the first is to prevent terrorism, while the second is to signal that violence committed for political, ideological or religious reasons is more serious than other forms of violence. This recent judgment achieves the latter: By applying our terrorism laws (or by adding terrorism enhancements to a murder charge) to incel-motivated violence, Canadians now know that this type of violence will be taken seriously as a national security threat, and will be dealt with using the full suite of our counterterrorism tools. This tool kit includes an entire system designed to detect and disrupt terrorist activity, which ranges from monitoring chat groups to using financial intelligence to follow the money and identify individuals who might be preparing to conduct an attack. These tools were largely developed to combat structured, organized terrorist activity. But the incel movement, and many other ideologically motivated violent extremist groups and movements, are anything but; they largely exist online, rarely interact in person, and conduct low-cost and low-complexity attacks such as stabbings or vehicular ramming. As a result, we need to rethink how we apply these tools, so they can be adapted to the new reality of terrorism. This will involve having our law enforcement, security services, and yes, the general public, understand that this type of violence is terrorism, and should be treated seriously. We need better detection and triaging of people who might be radicalizing in all kinds of extremism on platforms and forums for incels, but also on those that cater to anti-Muslim and anti-LGBTQ+ hatred and extremism. We also need better interventions that seek to divert at-risk individuals upstream – that is, identifying people who are in the early stages of contemplating an attack, rather than after the fact. Twenty years of counterterrorism has taught us that there are many interventions that can divert such people away from committing violence, including social and psychological interventions – but it has also taught us that in some cases, when other attempts fail, the only diversion is arrest and incarceration. Tackling ideologically motivated violence will require that Canada’s counterterrorism institutions apply all the lessons that they have learned. After 9/11, we expected our law enforcement and security services to rise to the challenge of combatting global terrorism. With an evolving threat – a shift that has now been set out in our courts – we must demand that they do so again, and expect that our law enforcement, security service, and Canadians in general treat ideologically motivated violence as the serious threat that it is. Subject: Extremism; Violence; Security services; Terrorism; Law enforcement; Politics; Counterterrorism URL: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article- canadas-terrorism-laws-have-finally-started- expanding-their-definition/ — Title: Canada’s terrorism laws have finally started expanding their definition: A precedent-setting court ruling about an incel-motivated homicide acknowledges the reality that terrorism is not only perpetrated by Islamist extremists Publication date: Jun 9, 2023 Copyright: Copyright The Globe and Mail Jun 9, 2023 Last updated: 2023-06-10 Driver in deadly Toronto van attack had long thought of mass killing, Crown says: Psychiatrist describes 28-year-old man from Richmond Hill as being ‘hyper-focused’ and even ‘indoctrinated” by the writings of Elliot Rodger, a mass killer affiliated with the incel subculture Author: Hayes, Molly Alek Minassian’s explanation for what motivated his mass killing shifted several times, the Crown argued at his murder trial Thursday in an attempt to cast doubt on a forensic psychiatrist’s assessment of him. The 28-year-old man from Richmond Hill, Ont., is on trial for 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder in connection with the April 23, 2018, van attack, in which he used a rented van as a weapon to run down pedestrians on Toronto’s busy Yonge Street. Mr. Minassian’s defence team argues he is not criminally responsible for the mass killing because he has autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which they say made him unable to rationally understand that what he was doing was wrong. Autism isn’t on trial in the Toronto van attack case. The accused is Dr. Rebecca Chauhan, a witness for the defence and a psychiatrist who assessed Mr. Minassian after his arrest in order to confirm his diagnosis, returned for a second day of testimony, this time for cross-examination by assistant Crown attorney John Rinaldi. In her report, Dr. Chauhan described Mr. Minassian as being “hyper-focused” and even “indoctrinated” by the writings of Elliot Rodger, a mass killer affiliated with the incel subculture. Incels (short for involuntary celibates) are part of a predominantly online network of misogynistic men who blame women for their inability to have sexual relationships. In his police interview after the attack, Mr. Minassian expressed a particular allegiance to Mr. Rodger who, before he killed six people and then himself in California in 2014, published a 137-page manifesto outlining his hatred toward women. Mr. Rinaldi took issue with Dr. Chauhan’s findings of incel indoctrination, arguing that Mr. Minassian “had mass murder on his mind well before” he ever learned about incels or Mr. Rodger. Through snippets of various doctors’ notes and reports presented by the Crown, court heard that Mr. Minassian had said he “fantasized” about becoming a school shooter as a teenager. Starting around 2009, he began perusing entries about mass murderers on Wikipedia. He pictured himself carrying out such an attack – and enjoyed the idea of the notoriety it would bring. But he said he didn’t know how to obtain a gun without getting hurt or getting caught. Those various reports also reflected a shift in narrative by Mr. Minassian, over time. For example, while he told police in his interrogation immediately after the attack about rejection he’d faced by women at a Halloween party in 2013, he later told doctors that he made up that story based on what he’d read in Mr. Rodger’s manifesto. In one interview, he even walked back his connection to the incel subculture, instead citing his motivation for the attack as anxiety about a new job. Mr. Rinaldi pointed to these inconsistencies, arguing that for this very reason, the assessments of Mr. Minassian’s symptoms are subjective. For example, he took issue with Dr. Chauhan’s finding that Mr. Minassian had a “significant impairment” in his ability to have reciprocal conversation. “I’m going to suggest that while there was an impairment, it was not significant – it was slight,” Mr. Rinaldi said. “When he’s recounting facts, he does pretty well,” Dr. Chauhan agreed, but she stressed that it was a one-way conversation, with him requiring prompting to give responses. Similarly, Mr. Rinaldi took issue with Dr. Chauhan’s assessment that Mr. Minassian lacked insight into the ways his ASD diagnosis affected him. He pointed to notes taken by another psychiatrist, who noted that Mr. Minassian said he “exaggerated it” in high school, but “in college... it was the reverse, I tried to act normal so that I would fit in.” Dr. Chauhan agreed that testing scores in certain areas could fluctuate depending on the assessor and what they are told or observe, but she was firm that the overall diagnosis would be unlikely to change. “I agree there is variability in tests and scoring,” she said. “But... I wouldn’t expect that somebody is going to go from having an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis to not having an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis.” Subject: Autism; Mass murders; Massacres; Subcultures; Indoctrination — Title: Driver in deadly Toronto van attack had long thought of mass killing, Crown says: Psychiatrist describes 28-year-old man from Richmond Hill as being ‘hyper-focused’ and even ‘indoctrinated” by the writings of Elliot Rodger, a mass killer affiliated with the incel subculture Publication date: Nov 19, 2020 Copyright: Copyright The Globe and Mail Nov 19, 2020 Last updated: 2020-11-20 Police lay first terrorism charge for Toronto case involving misogyny: The decision to lay terrorism against an alleged follower of the incel movement is significant, and may signal that Canadian prosecutors are gearing up to pursue a wider array of suspects as criminal terrorists Author: Hayes, Molly; Freeze, Colin A 17-year-old has been charged with terrorism in connection with the February slaying of a woman at an erotic massage parlour in Toronto – a killing that police now allege was motivated by the “incel” ideology, which is rooted in the hatred of women. The charges, announced Tuesday by Toronto Police and the RCMP, mark the first time police in Canada have formally acknowledged an alleged misogynistic crime as terrorism – a positive signal for advocates who have long been calling for the recognition of violence against women as terrorism “This is monumental in Canadian history,” said Nneka MacGregor, executive director of the Women’s Centre for Social Justice in Toronto. “I’m hopeful that it’s a wake-up call. … I’m hoping that this move will help society at large understand what those of us in in the [violence against women] sector have seen, and have been calling for, for decades.” On a Monday afternoon in February, police were called to the Crown Spa in the north end of Toronto over reports of a stabbing. When they arrived, officers discovered a 17-year-old male youth and a 30-year-old woman outside the massage parlour, both of whom were suffering from multiple stab wounds. Inside, they found a woman – later identified as Ashley Noell Arzaga, 24 – who was pronounced dead at the scene. The 17-year-old (who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act) was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder. Shortly after the incident occurred, investigators say they uncovered evidence that the case had been allegedly inspired by the “incel” movement – an online women-hating collective of “involuntarily celibate” men who are frustrated by their lack of success sexually attracting women. The ultimate targets of the incels’ anger are known as “Chads” and “Staceys,” sexually active men and women who the incels believe have been rewarded by unfair social standards. The incels feel that they – the “beta males” – have been punished by those same societal standards. The deadly Toronto van attack in 2018 brought the incel movement into the public eye in Canada. Because federal authorities lay the majority of terrorism charges in Canada, Toronto Police detectives contacted the RCMP-led Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, which worked with federal and provincial prosecutors to add the terrorism charges. The 17-year-old appeared in court Tuesday morning, where his charges were upgraded to first-degree murder with terrorist activity and attempted murder with terrorist activity. Michael Nesbitt, a criminal law professor at the University of Calgary, said the case will be a legal watershed for the Anti-Terrorism Act that Canada passed in 2001. Over the past two decades, Canada has seen roughly 60 terrorism charges laid. Almost all of those have been against extremists inspired by al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. The Crown’s decision to lay terrorism against an alleged follower of the incel movement is highly significant, Prof. Nesbitt said – and may be a signal that Canadian prosecutors are gearing up to pursue a wider array of suspects as criminal terrorists. “It’s a really big deal,” he said. Amarnath Amarasingam, an assistant professor in the School of Religion at Queen’s University and one of Canada’s leading scholars on terrorism, agreed that the new charges are a legal landmark. Police and prosecutors in Canada “are more and more realizing that seeing the full-threat picture is important,” he said In the past, he said, the argument against laying terrorism charges in murder cases has been that they are not worth the extra burden in court when the road to conviction is simpler on murder charges alone. “The challenge still exists, in terms of courts. But maybe one of the shifts that has happened is that politically speaking they want to make a more consistent argument to the public about what they consider to be terrorism.” As far as Prof. Amarasingam knows, this is the first criminal case globally to have brought terrorism charges in an alleged incel case. “I think there have only been... maybe seven attacks total globally from the incel community,” he said. “I don’t think any of them other than this one has been charged with terrorism.” Barbara Perry, director of the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism at Ontario Tech University, said she was surprised by the news given how little attention this particular case seemed to have gotten, but she called it a “welcome development.” “I think it’s a response to public pressure and stakeholder pressure to expand the understanding or the interpretation of what constitutes terrorism in this country specifically,” Prof. Perry said. Legal scholar Amanda Dale, who is a member of an expert advisory panel with the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability, said that while she appreciates the rhetorical value of recognizing misogyny as terrorism, she is uncomfortable with the nature of terrorism charges to begin with. “The whole concept of terrorism is itself problematic in my view, because it’s legally subject to a great deal of interpretation,” Dr. Dale said. “[It’s a charge that] was never legally airtight, and was really politically defined.” She is also concerned that by classifying a particular form of public violence against women as terrorism, it suggests there is a “supreme” form of violence, “and all the other forms of violence that are connected to it start to look like they’re just garden variety, so not worth our attention.” “I think it is important to understand all forms of violence against women in a continuum,” she said. Prof. Perry, on the other hand, said she believes this case “raises the bar in terms of acknowledging violence against women as this serious. And I don’t think that means all other cases need to rise to the same level in order to be taken seriously.” University of Ottawa law professor Elizabeth Sheehy agrees. “I think that it’s a positive signal. I think it is a recognition that virulent misogyny is a form of terrorism,” she said. “I think it is important for us to call it terrorism and to find the mechanisms to respond to it appropriately. … It requires strong denunciation, it requires action.” Subject: Terrorism; Misogyny; Women; Stabbings — Title: Police lay first terrorism charge for Toronto case involving misogyny: The decision to lay terrorism against an alleged follower of the incel movement is significant, and may signal that Canadian prosecutors are gearing up to pursue a wider array of suspects as criminal terrorists Publication date: May 19, 2020 Copyright: Copyright The Globe and Mail May 19, 2020 Last updated: 2020-05-19 The lingering cultural bruise of David Fincher’s Fight Club , 20 years later: From so-called red-pill awakenings to 4chan’s swamp to incel trolls: Fight Club has both predicted our current, toxic zeitgeist while at the same time being directly, if unintentionally, responsible for it Author: Hertz, Barry “Oh, I get it. It’s clever. How’s that working out for you? Being clever?” So asks Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden of Edward Norton’s nameless narrator about 15 minutes into Fight Club . The wink-nudge exchange, one of countless fly-by witticisms laced into Jim Uhls’s adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, highlights the narrative bobs and weaves yet to come in director David Fincher’s film. But the line also acts as an unintentional pre-emptive meta-query of Fight Club ’s own legacy. As in: How has that cleverness worked out, exactly, 20 years later? The answer: far better, and messier, than anyone could have possibly imagined. Released two decades ago this week, on Oct. 15, 1999, Fight Club didn’t so much pummel Hollywood as get beaten down by it. Its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival was greeted with a chorus of boos. (“Literally the guy running the festival got up and left,” Pitt recalled years later.) The industry media was openly hostile, with the Hollywood Reporter running a column that said the film “will become Washington’s poster child for what’s wrong with Hollywood. And Washington, for once, will be right.” Critics across the approval matrix slammed it (the Los Angeles Times called it “a witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing” while The Wall Street Journal, perhaps more predictably, complained that the film “reeks with condescension.”) First-run audiences mostly ignored it, with the film opening to US$11-million, only narrowly beating the fourth-week gross of the Ashley Judd thriller Double Jeopardy. Fight Club , intended to be the triumphant re-teaming of Pitt and Fincher, whose serial-killer thriller Sevenwas a worldwide sensation just four years earlier, would leave theatres barely earning back half of its US$63-million budget. Timing, though, is everything. The deeply dark satire, focusing on an office worker bee (Norton) who teams up with a charismatic radical (Pitt) to start an underground fighting society that quickly morphs into an anarchist movement, came into the world with the nihilistic violence of Columbine fresh in the cultural memory. Studio Twentieth Century Fox, then in the midst of corporate war games, mismarketed the work as a fist-pumping action movie. (“I had close friends say to me, ‘I haven’t seen it yet – I’m not into boxing movies,’ ” Uhls recently told journalist Brian Raftery,author ofBest. Movie. Year. Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen.) And the film’s detractors were loud, ruthless and unafraid of spoiling its crucial third-act twist. (Rosie O’Donnell gave the game away on her popular afternoon talk-show, a move Pitt later called “unforgivable.”) But it didn’t take that long for Fight Club to build an enthusiastic, disparate, often philosophically-at-odds membership. I should know – I was one of them. At 16, I was working in a suburban Toronto multiplex, sweeping away popcorn and tearing ticket stubs, a mindless job that afforded me plenty of opportunities to see the same movies, over and over – an especially sweet job perk if said movies were restricted to those 18 years and older. During Fight Club ’s first few weeks, I must have watched the movie a dozen times. Much of its subversiveness flew over my head – I was too much of a goody-goody to glom onto any of its coarser politics, and too young and dumb to realize it was critiquing the violence it was simultaneously revelling in – but the film’s eagerness to shock and appall was instantly appealing. And that twist! I spent so very many hours of my life pulling apart the reveal that (two-decade-old spoiler alert) Tyler and the Narrator were the same person, poring over the (actually overwhelming) evidence that Fincher literally spliced into the film. Were I to have a dorm room at the time, you can bet that a Fight Club poster would’ve adorned at least one of its walls. When the movie was released on DVD in the summer of 2000, I was waiting outside my local HMV to buy a copy. As were, eventually, six million others around the world, who would help make Fight Club one of the most successful home-entertainment releases ever – and one of the most popular, misunderstood and prescient films of the 20th century. In so many ways, Fight Club has both predicted our current, toxic zeitgeist while at the same time being directly, if unintentionally, responsible for it. So-called men’s rights activists and their “red pill” awakenings; the anti-snowflake far-right movement; the troll-in-jester guise of swampy online forums such as 4chan; the virulent ascendancy of the “involuntary celibate” crowd: All were foretold by Fight Club in one way or another. And all can, with particular blinders affixed, find common cause with Fight Club , too. The intensely charismatic, highly styled and perfectly sculpted Durden spends much of the film whispering anti-consumerist slogans – “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won’t” – that are at once sincere and self-satirizing, coming as they are from the mouth of, well, one of the world’s biggest movie gods. Throughout the film, there is an intense, and hilarious, push-pull tension between who modern men are expected to be, and who they actually are – the cracked result of one privileged and selfish generation’s neglectful shattering of another. But the film is, from all points of conception, a comedy. Think of the moment when Durden is being slugged by the cartoonish mobster Lou – the punches keep coming until our presumed hero is laughing maniacally, spitting blood in the face of his foe and the audience. You think that this society is a joke? Well, that’s because it is. Yet, since Fight Club ’s release, the film’s satirical backbone has been cracked and reshaped through a series of reappraisals and misinterpretations, with the darkest of the internet’s corners treating Durden’s faux provocations as gospel. The character was conceived by Palahniuk as an effortlessly cool manifestation of the Narrator’s worst impulses, a prank of the mind that eventually becomes uncontrollable and psychopathic. As Durden begins to radicalize the impressionable young men in his orbit, and as his ideals take the physical form of guns and bombs, audiences are not meant to identify with this rabid dog of a prophet, but to become repulsed, as is the Narrator’s response. Project Mayhem, Durden’s end-game, sticks a fork in the eye of not only the huge corporations undoubtedly making life worse for the modern man, but also those who are naive enough to think that burning everything to the ground is the answer. But by pointing a finger at their audience, Fincher and company didn’t realize that so many would flip the bird right back at them, or at least their ideals and intentions. The filmmakers are not entirely off the hook here. A recent rewatch – my first in about five years – revealed how frequently the film slips into just the kind of juvenile bro humour it otherwise repudiates. Remember the vulgar mammaries of eventual Project Mayhem casualty Bob (played, quite affectingly, by Meat Loaf)? Or the sick liposuction scheme at the heart of Durden’s soap empire? Or the newspaper clips trumpeting, say, the “molestation” of a performance artist? All immature and gross moments that play just outside the film’s satirical bull’s eye. Briefly, it feels, Fincher is giving his audience permission to laugh at someone else, and not ourselves – the laziest route of comedy. Mostly, though, Fight Club resonates today precisely because it refuses to do things the easy way. It is messy, and uncomfortable, and relentless in its thematic and aesthetic ambitions (it’s astounding to think of just how much time and energy was spent on so many of its throwaway sequences, such as the Narrator’s visit to his imaginary ice cave complete with CGI penguin, or the five-second scene where he fantasizes about a midair collision). Placed next to a more recent effort in distilling male anger – say, Todd Phillips’s Joker- and there is no comparison at all. I’m just as sure that we’ll still be talking and arguing aboutFight Club in the year 2039 as we will have also by then cycled through at least three more iterations of the Clown Prince of Crime. Fight Club hits you as hard as it can. Twenty years later, the bruise hasn’t faded. Subject: Motion pictures; Audiences; Thrillers; Cultural heritage — Title: The lingering cultural bruise of David Fincher’s Fight Club , 20 years later: From so-called red-pill awakenings to 4chan’s swamp to incel trolls: Fight Club has both predicted our current, toxic zeitgeist while at the same time being directly, if unintentionally, responsible for it Publication date: Oct 13, 2019 Copyright: Copyright The Globe and Mail Oct 13, 2019 Last updated: 2020-03-24 Public Safety Canada investing almost $2-million in organizations studying incel community: There is a growing body of knowledge on incel ideology, an area of research now being funded by Public Safety Canada to organizations that study right-wing extremism, including links to misogynistic violence Author: Campbell, Meagan Testosterone is also known as “T” in the incel community. A coping mechanism is called “a cope.” Turning violent in the way of Elliot Rodger, a man who killed six people and then himself in California in 2014, is called “going ER.” This list of terminology is part of the growing body of knowledge on incel ideology, an area of research now being funded in part by Public Safety Canada. In the year since a van attack in Toronto that left 10 people dead, allegedly committed by a self-described member of the incel community, the department has granted almost $2-million to organizations that study right-wing extremism, including links to misogynistic violence. In its 2018 report on the terrorism threat to Canada, the department said the Toronto attack “alerted Canada to the dangers of the online incel movement.” Alek Minassian, the man accused of carrying out the attack last April, was allegedly responsible for a Facebook post celebrating an “incel rebellion.” Incels are an online community – predominantly men – who believe they cannot attract women. Incels self-identify as biologically inferior to other men – and see no solution to this condition except suicide or public violence. Researchers have rarely touched the topic of incels – a portmanteau of “involuntary celibates” – whose online rants often seem incoherent and insincere. But now they are taking the warped thoughts seriously in a bid to prevent harm. To help men leave the toxic online community, researchers are considering partnering with forums such as Reddit to advertise and send direct messages about intervention services to incels, said an analyst at Moonshot CVE – Countering Violent Extremism, an organization that received $1.5-million from Public Safety Canada in 2018 to introduce an online method of countering radicalization. As a woman, the analyst requested anonymity to avoid being targeted by incels. The most respected incels, the analyst said, are isolated and flawed, while any attractive quality – being tall, fit or employed – is condemned. They respect other incels who are “NEET” – “not in education, employment or training” – said the analyst. And if an incel tries to make a friend or find a job, this behaviour is criticized as a coping mechanism. Researchers have an ethical duty to study incels, the analyst said, not just to protect the public but to protect incels themselves, who are often at a higher risk of suicide – which they refer to as “roping.” She said they tend to mistrust mental-health professionals and doctors, who may tell them that nothing is physically wrong with them despite their belief in their biological inferiority. In Quebec, the Center for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence has also become interested in incels since the van attack. “The intervention team had seen in a few cases this incel discourse,” said Benjamin Ducol, the centre’s research manager. “We are paying much more attention when we have a case that is referred to us.” Mary Lilly, who wrote her master’s thesis at the University of Ottawa about online anti-feminist communities, also plans to study incels this summer, partly to determine if they are present on private messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram. “I think a big one that we hear pretty often is ‘These are sad, lonely men. If only a woman had paid attention to them,’ ” Ms. Lilly said. “I think that sort of ignores the power of the ideology in this.” Subject: Extremism; Men; Violence; Researchers; Public safety Company / organization: Name: Public Safety Canada; NAICS: 922190 — Title: Public Safety Canada investing almost $2-million in organizations studying incel community: There is a growing body of knowledge on incel ideology, an area of research now being funded by Public Safety Canada to organizations that study right-wing extremism, including links to misogynistic violence Publication date: Apr 25, 2019 Copyright: Copyright The Globe and Mail Apr 25, 2019 Last updated: 2020-03-25 The ‘incel’ community and the dark side of the internet Author: Ling, Justin; Mahoney, Jill; McGuire, Patrick; Freeze, Colin Innocently coined by a Canadian who sought to create an inclusive space, the term ‘involuntary celibates’ – referenced recently by Alek Minassian – has since been co-opted by online misogynists It was a Canadian woman who coined the term “involuntary celibates” and launched a website more than 20 years ago that she hoped would provide a supportive outlet for lonely hearts. In the years since, she has watched with horror as the phrase – shortened to “incel” – has been co-opted by online trolls and violent misogynists, including allegedly Alek Minassian, the driver accused of killing 10 people in Toronto on Monday. “I said, ‘Oh no, not again,’” the woman who asked to be identified only as Alana, her first name, told The Globe and Mail. “It feels like being the scientist who figured out nuclear fission and then discovers it’s being used as a weapon for war. It’s not a happy feeling.” A Facebook page belonging to Mr. Minassian posted an update on Monday afternoon proclaiming an “Incel Rebellion,” just before, police allege, he accelerated a white rental van, plowing into a crowded street in the North York neighbourhood, killing 10 and injuring more than a dozen others. Detective Sergeant Graham Gibson told a news conference on Tuesday afternoon that the victims were “predominately female.” The post on Mr. Minassian’s Facebook also references “Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger,” the gunman who opened fire on students at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014, killing six. In a video posted before his attack, Mr. Rodger called his planned attack “retribution” for the women who rejected him and for “all you men for living a better life than me.” Mr. Rodger, before his shooting rampage and suicide, was known to post on at least one incel message board, online communities almost entirely made up of men who blame society for their inability to find a partner. Now, many such communities idolize him. He is often invoked with his initials, “ER,” sometimes used in the context of “Going ER,” as in pulling off a copycat attack. While it remains unclear exactly how Mr. Minassian fits into these online communities of anti-feminist trolls, many self-styled incels spent Tuesday celebrating the attack he is alleged to have carried out. The incel community exists in a dark corner of the internet, infamous for its sexist, racist and homophobic language, where cyberbullying and posts normalizing rape are common. The incels on these forums blame their problems – often, their virginity – on others. They often refer to sexually active men as “Chads” and women as “Stacys.” And while these sites may be well outside the mainstream, they boast a surprisingly large following. Although there may be some overlap, two forums report at least 5,000 members each, while a third claims 9,000 registered users. As of Tuesday morning, hundreds of active users were on the forums, many looking at the discussion of Mr. Minassian. Apart from those traditional web forums, there is 4chan, mentioned by name in the post on Mr. Minassian’s Facebook page; it is home to one of the most popular incel communities. 4chan is a message board dating back to 2003 that allows users to post texts and images anonymously on a variety of issue-specific boards. In recent years, it has become infamous as a home for online trolls. Web-ranking service Alexa reports 4chan is among the 100 most popular websites in the United States. One of its pages, popular with incels, has thousands of daily posts. Many posts on these forums specifically delve into the mental-health issues of the posters, especially autism. James Ellis, the project lead for the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society, told The Globe that the “echo chamber” nature of some online communities appears to have pushed Mr. Rodger to violence. “Sex is a powerful motivator for anyone – and for young men especially. And young men who are frustrated in that area will feel a kinship for people in that area,” he said. Since Mr. Rodger’s 2014 attack, many on these message boards have posted glowingly about the shooter and his manifesto. “If you go ER,” reads one 2017 post, referencing Mr. Rodger’s initials, “you’ll basically be immortalized and live on forever since people will speak about you for decades.” The post was in response to a user who was contemplating suicide. “Going ER” was suggested as an alternative. The poster wrote that the end result would be the same, as “the cops will shoot you if they see you.” After the events unfolded on Monday, several incel forums lit up about the attack. It’s hard to tell whether Mr. Minassian was a member or poster on any of these forums, although at least two users claimed they had spoken to him on the site. These users did not respond to requests for comment from The Globe. While these communities, and others like them, have gotten some scrutiny since the 2014 attack, and with the rise of the so-called “alt-right” movement – a U.S.-based white-nationalist movement – much of the violent sexism and misogyny on these forums goes largely unnoticed by the media and researchers who handle online radicalization and violence. Amarnath Amarasingam, a senior research fellow at the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue who specializes in online radicalization, said that these forums are generally just social groups where disgruntled men can get together and “talk smack.” What makes some of these incel forums particularly virulent though, he said, is that they “are quite often openly calling for violence against women and a society they feel has wronged them.” To that end, he added, “under the right set of psychological and personal circumstances, these kinds of forums can be dangerous and push people into violence.” Mr. Ellis notes that while those in the incel community, like other online groups that could be prone to violence, may be more public in their ideology, that means intelligence and policing agencies need to be more vigilant in monitoring them. Mr. Ellis added that he’s monitoring a specific user who idolizes Mr. Rodger. “It’s very cold and calculating and he’s saying very specifically what he is doing.” At the same time, Mr. Ellis said, governments must be “realistic with the public in terms of what we’re capable of preventing and what we can’t.” Multiple posters on incel forums seemed to recognize that increased scrutiny may now be coming. One user, a year before the Toronto van attack, wrote that law enforcement may have already been monitoring their message board: “I don’t think it’s too unlikely, this place is dangerous in that it combines both mental illness and harmful ideology.” For Alana, the online incel world has become “twisted” from the rudimentary text-only website she built around 1996 or 1997. She had found herself a virgin in her mid-20s and came up with the term involuntary celibates, selected for its clinical descriptiveness. Later, after she sought out therapy and began to date, she created a website for people who had similar experiences. “It was meant to be an inclusive movement for people of all genders who find themselves celibate or lonely and not dating,” she said. “It was meant to be a helpful, supportive movement.” As her social life picked up, Alana abandoned the website by 2000 and turned it over to someone else. She didn’t realize the term incel had been adopted by the hateful fringe until early 2015 when she picked up a magazine and noticed an article about Mr. Rodger. “It was a shock to discover that there was someone whose particular reason for violence was that they were lonely and celibate because there are lots of reasons why killers become violent.” Subject: Violence; Misogyny; Women; Websites