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The Texas Department of Public Safety recently reported that the largest threat by far to America’s domestic safety and tranquility comes from white racist organizations.
The report confirms that a majority of recent attacks nationwide have been the work of white racially motivated organizations, or WRMs. White racists are currently the most violently active domestic terrorists; incels are next.
If you have never heard of incels, you have lots of company. According to the report, although they are not a new movement, involuntary celibates are emerging as a domestic terrorism threat “as current adherents demonstrate marked acts or threats of violence in furtherance of their social grievance.”
Wikipedia defines incels as members of an online subculture who are unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, a state they describe as inceldom.
In an article titled “The Rage of the Incels,” The New Yorker reported that what incels want is “extremely limited and specific: they want to be able to have sex on demand with young, beautiful women. They believe that this is a natural right.” The article’s subhead calls this what it is: a belief in male supremacy. Other publications have weighed in with efforts to explain how what was originally an online support group for the dateless evolved into one of the internet’s most dangerous subcultures.
Over the past two decades, the incel community, which numbers somewhere in the tens of thousands, has evidently fallen under the sway of a sexist ideology it calls—for reasons that escape me—“the black pill.” The ideology amounts to a fundamental rejection of women’s sexual emancipation, labeling women shallow, cruel creatures who will choose only the most attractive men if given the choice.
The black pill can lead to violence. The man accused of killing eight women and two men in a van attack in Toronto last year told police he was radicalized through online incel message boards and hoped to start a “rebellion.” He said he had been in contact with two other incels who committed mass killings, and when asked how he felt about those he killed and injured, said: “I feel like I accomplished my mission.”
Media attention has focused on the risk of more mass killings and that is obviously a serious concern. But an even more obvious threat is that incels will engage in more limited acts of violence ranging from harassment to violent assault.
A column in The Washington Post warned that the incel subculture has become not just self-reinforcing but self-radicalizing. Self-described incels have taken their anger out on the women who are refusing them. At least two mass shooters have issued manifestos identifying themselves as incels and justifying their actions as revenge on a world that hasn’t given them the women they think they deserve.
According to the Texas Public Safety report, these two groups—white racists and incels—perpetrate a majority of domestic attacks. Despite that conclusion, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is “safeguarding” citizens of the Lone Star State by refusing to accept refugees–who, according to all available research, pose no threat to public safety.
Worse, in the nation’s capital, the Trump administration vilifies Muslims and Mexicans while actively encouraging the white nationalists who, along with the incels, are responsible for the majority of domestic terror attacks.
They’re trying to “Make America Great Again” for the straight white Christian men unable to deal with a world they don’t control.•
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Kennedy is a professor of law and public policy at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IUPUI.
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