UKC

Something major happening in Plymouth by the sounds of it?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/aug/12/emergency-services-scene-in...

It's interesting and quite sad that there is no interest at all on here to discuss this horrific event yet on womens forums and feminist Twitter etc this is the main topic of conversation today since the announcement/YouTube video suggesting the perpetrator was a follower of the "black-pilled" incel movement. 

Maybe this forum is less inclined to a) speculate on horrid events based on internet rumour and b) frame every event as part of a brain-rotting culture war

Tasteless, even by your standards.

you can take it that there isn't a lot of information yet, what there is is shocking and speculation seems futile and in bad taste

just the same as the shootings in West Cumbria years back

Plus there is a lot ov very bad news to contemplate at present, particularly as all the predictions I made here as the US led us into Afghanistan under Blair have come true in their entirety.  It's a sombre time, enjoy your tabloid reports.

It would seem that in the absence of information from the Police, the press have trawled social media. From limited info and speculation, they have pulled some sensationalist details in order to drive clicks on their pages.

We see similar whenever there is an incident in the hills. The press are eager to jump in with nonsense, closely followed by ill-informed comments below the story.

My understanding is that he killed members of his family and then shot some unrelated people. It would be up to the police to determine if he had a meltdown and then went on a rampage or if there is a different narrative. If he entered a women only space and killed, then the story might be different. From the current info it seems like people were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I'm not defending the guy. He was clearly a bell end. My thoughts are with those directly affected.

Events not unlike these have been perpetrated in the US and Canada by those who very much see themselves as being in a "culture war", and where that is the case these attacks are arguably acts of terrorism.  I agree that it's unhelpful to speculate though.

There's more info coming out, the first shocker being that victim no1 was his mum.

Ive also learned a new word today, incel, which on further reading has all the hallmarks of a subculture which could do real damage, especially in a divided world and a society still painting a picture of perfection in the media.

A group of sexually frustrated, bitter, suicidal young males(mostly) hell bent on vengeful destruction, with a growing list of idols (Joker being the romantacised epitome) and with access to firearms. Combine that with the final message being played over and over on the internet; the final act giving some warped infamy to the perpetrator.

What could possibly go wrong?

This morning when his name was first released by the BBC but with no details, and having heard last night that it was "not a terrorist incident", seen the (slightly) disproportionate number of female victims I immediately googled his name and "incel" and my hunch was confirmed. This has not come as a surprise to many people. I am amazed you hadn't heard the term incel before.

I think you forgot "misogynistic" and "entitled" in that summary.

But it's more than just that if you read up the "blackpill philosophy" which is summed up as all the above but with resignation that it won't ever get better so either "lie down and take it", suicide, or mass destruction.

Also there is evidence of the incel movement being a route used by far rights groups to radicalise young men. It's a scary rabbit hole.

They could issue him with a firearms license!!

What I find shocking is that given how quickly and easily the media managed to dig up this info on him it is amazing that this was not picked up by gun license checks.

Do you know he had a FAC or are you jumping to a conclusion?

It’s being reported in the press. He had it removed due to some incident and had to do an anger management course to reinstate it. 

Thanks, I hadn’t seen that part reported.  

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/aug/13/plymouth-shooting-police-re...

I did see a comment from the US on Facebook that said "we call this sort of thing 'Thursday'".

Thanks.

Yes, because I am capable of reading the news before commenting.

SGC, not FAC. 

More seriously, the 'incel' thing ; I don't really know what to say. What cultural influences make these people (sorry: men/boys) feel they have a 'right' not to be 'celibate'? I ought to be a prime candidate for an incel, but I figured it was just because I was an unattractive, tedious git, that no-one wanted to have sex with me. I never for a moment thought it was my 'right' to have a partner.

In the absence of a link, I asked.  

I have thanked those who answered with details.  

After your jumping to (spectacularly wrong) conclusions on the recent Pembroke thread I thought it wise to ask.

Disproportionate? he killed 6 people and three of them were men. Just to clarify, what was your hunch then?

You're making an awful lot of assumptions on very little information. What's hard to dispute is that the murderer clearly had mental health issues. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't allow yourself to be so judgmental in your professional setting so what gives in a situation where we know sod all?

Sad inadequates who struggle with life have always been with us, it's just now social media has provided buzz words and the illusion of community. "Incel" isn't a real movement, it's a straw that social media has thrown up for the desperately sad to clutch at.

See above. Pretty safe to file most of that shite under the category "sad inadequates". See also ISIS and every other batshit ideologically based nonsense movement.

By gun license checks you mean licensing authorities dropping their GP a line asking if the applicant poses a significant threat to themselves or others. How much scrutiny do you think that gets, assuming the applicant hadn't turned up the week before telling their GP "the voices want me to do bad things"?

There have actually been a couple of cases in court involving disabled men claiming sex is a human right and therefore they should get additional benefits to assist them to access it in one case and another that the carers should be legally allowed/ or required (not quite sure) to assist them to access a prostitute.

I appreciate it must be tough to live with certain disabilities and one of the individuals is physically disabled and neurodiverse which must make things extra hard for him, but this is one hell of a slippery slope.

You'd need to look the cases up yourself as they are complex with appeals ongoing etc. But it is effectively court sanctioning men's (both cases involve men) to be entitled to women's bodies for sex. It's scary and depressing stuff.

This all plays into the hands of the incel movement.

He killed 5, and 2 were men, has another victim died?

He killed 6. He killed himself.

I'm slightly surprised, but not at all amazed.

Absolutely.  If there is a defining characteristic of an 'incel', entitled misogyny would be it.  Which is why it would be impossible to take any interest in feminist issues at all, especially in the USA, without having heard of these disturbing weirdos.  (And perhaps therefore easy to overestimate the level of awareness of them among those who don't.)

If his being radicalised online played a part in his motivation for doing this, as seems likely, my worthless opinion is that the police may have been a bit too quick to say it was definitely not a terrorist attack in their attempts to allay fears.  Arguably perhaps it was.

That is exactly the approach the Dutch and Danish take.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=holland+disable+sex

I would characterise that more as claiming that they have a right to be equally able to express their sexuality as an able-bodied person - a subtle but rather important distinction.  I think disabled women have been involved in litigation along similar lines too.

"You're making an awful lot of assumptions on very little information. What's hard to dispute is that the murderer clearly had mental health issues. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't allow yourself to be so judgmental in your professional setting so what gives in a situation where we know sod all?"

If he was a young male of Asian descent who had gone on the rampage and posted a video of his radicalised ideological believes on YouTube, at 24 hours after the event, would you be going, there there, be kind, he was clearly mentally ill. 1 in 3 people suffer mental health problems at some point in their life but manage not to shoot multiple people.

I'm pretty sure you wouldn't allow yourself to be so racist in your professional setting.

I think the following may address your question:

"See above. Pretty safe to file most of that shite under the category "sad inadequates". See also ISIS and every other batshit ideologically based nonsense movement."

edit: FFS.

I believe 'mental health issues' is the current version of 'move along nothing to see here'. It has been used a number of times when people of Asian descent have randomly stabbed people.

Could you point out this racism, as I'm struggling to see it.

What an extraordinarily odd comment. 

Or kill themselves.

Your point is, caller?

When Salman Abedi blew himself up at the Manchester Arena it hit close to home, literally as it was 15 miles away, friends of my daughters were there and friends and colleagues were among those dealing with the aftermath. I was very angry. I was also on here calling him out as a sad inadequate. Just like on this occasion and just like on this occasion I never once expressed the sentiment "there there, be kind, he was clearly mentally ill". You obviously have a great deal of difficulty seeing beyond your own prejudices.

If you can point out any racism in anything I've posted I'll gladly retract and apologise, otherwise perhaps you'd do me the courtesy of apologising for being such an arse.

The difference is the sad inadequates would have been by themselves in the past. Now they can group together a lot easier and cheer each other on. There have been several mass murders mostly in the US but also in Canada where the killers have left notes/videos etc quoting the incel ideology (much of which comes from one of the earliest murderers "manifesto").

Whilst certainly not all they do seem to have had some really poisonous forums and groups n the past (many have been banned due to the webhosts not appreciating getting a mention in the stories about those mass murders) which sit there egging people on. Imagine being screwed up emotionally and logging onto a forum to ask strangers for advice and help and instead of trying to help they aim to make things worse instead?

Whilst clearly beyond the press releasing snippets the evidence is limited for how tightly tied he was to the incel movement it is certainly a real movement albeit probably small and one which has already proved dangerous.

Thank goodness we have UKC. Where ideological bollocks is generally called out for what it is.

So who exactly is behind the 'incel movement'? Surely it's another incarnation of  the 'evils of the internet', just like pro-ana websites?

Why do you need anyone specific behind it? It just comes down to:

Upside of internet "people can get in contact with people with similar interests all round the world easily and then get more involved in that interest" (terms and conditions apply. offer may not be available in all regions such as China).

Downside of internet "people can get in contact with people with similar interests all round the world easily and then get more involved in that interest".

He shot his mother, which was clearly a targeted killing, then appears to have walked out into the street and randomly shot everyone he came into contact with regardless of gender.

You seem to be assigning a deliberate, political, misogynist terrorist agenda to some inadequate f**kwit.

If there was evidence of a structured 'incel' movement similar to ISIS, PIRA or the right wing Militias in the US then it might well be regarded as a terrorist attack.

It appears to be just another sad loner who shouldn't have been allowed access to firearms. I'm not disputing there is an issue with the 'incel' label, which seems to legitimise ugly, unattractive blokes taking out their grievances on innocent people, but I think you're trying far to hard to apply an 'all men are evil' spin on this.

If his intent was inline with the poisonous Incel narrative and an attempt to strike back at all the women who'd sexually rejected him then the choice of victims would seem rather odd; his mother, a three year old child, a passing dog walker and two middle aged men. Alternately, his choice of victims would be perfectly in keeping with a murderous and mentally unbalanced man with a gun going off the rails with horrific consequences.

Michael Ryan was also in his twenties, also shot his mother, also shot random strangers, also with legally owned firearms. Hard to make the case that he was inspired by incels or social media though since the Hungerford massacre was in 1987.

It's human nature to try to make sense of the senseless. The reality is that in many cases there is no sense.

It was a rhetorical question. My observation about the internet was the same as yours. Only more succinct.

That's already happened in Canada:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52733060

I don't see any hint of that, but I do see a few posters reacting to things SAF has had to say in previous threads* rather than responding to what she's saying here.  It'd be nice if we could avoid this thread becoming an absolute shitshow like certain previous ones.

(*Which, to be clear, does not include "all men are evil" as far as I know.)

Genuinely,  first I'd heard the word yesterday. Wikipedia filled in the rest.

Same here. I will bet most people have never heard of it. 
 

Good comment.It’s always us males though.

Just listened to The Smiths in my day. Another unwelcome aspect of American culture we seem to have imported. 

Incel sounds too cool, hints at Special Forces/Elite recon team etc 

Inadequanker would be my portmanteau of choice.

I've just read this on the BBC News site - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58198857.

No one knows the full situation in this case but given the following piece(from the above link)

Getting a licence is a long and complicated business.

It starts with an application form which asks specific questions about why the individual wants a gun, telling them they need to show "good reason".

This might be that they need it for their profession or sport. A simple wish to own a particular type of firearm is not in itself enough.

They must also prove that they are allowed to have a firearms certificate and pose no danger to public safety or to the peace.

Independent referees have to provide confidential character statements in which they are expected to answer in detail about the applicant's mental state, home life and attitude towards guns.

Officers check the Police National Computer for a criminal record - anyone who has served a prison sentence of more than three years is banned for life from holding a firearms licence.

The police will also speak to the applicant's GP for evidence of alcoholism, drug abuse or signs of personality disorder. Social services can also be asked for reasons to turn down an applicant.

Finally, senior officers must be sure that prospective shotgun holders have a secure location for the weapon, typically a dedicated gun cabinet.

it surprises me how he got a gun licence at all.

Dave

Maybe people were doing the right thing. Yesterday morning the police were asking people not to share and discuss this incident on social media so that it didn't affect their investigation. And the first person to respond is you pushing towards him being a member of some evil woman hating cult. 

play nicely please!

I think the system is weak in terms of agencies reporting back to the police if the individual has problems after a licence has already been issued. 

They’ve muddled up the FAC & SGC stuff a bit there.
You don’t need a specific purpose for owning a shotgun, you just need to meet the basic criteria (references, criminal record check, medical history, secure storage). An officer from Firearms Licensing will come around & do a visit to check your security arrangements & get a general judge of character, but if that’s all OK then you get a shotgun.
Getting an FAC is more complicated & requires specific needs for each calibre, dedicated land that is suitable for use, and a plethora of other conditions that the police need you to meet. A bit irritating at first, but understandable, and when you’ve had your FAC for a while, the conditions tend to become less onerous. 

The problem is, you could be mentally unwell but not have sought medical help for it, which means your doctor can’t advise the police as such. As soon as you get a license (SGC or FAC), a marker is placed on your medical notes so your GP knows to notify the police if you present with any relevant conditions. 

Without wishing to give too much exposure to a genuinely hateful person, his Reddit account was available for viewing until last night and I think it would be useful for understanding his mindset to see just a small portion of what he believed:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelsInAction/comments/oyo846/kinda_got_pedo_vibe...

https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelsInAction/comments/p3r5m3/plymouth_shooters_c...

The rest of his posts were a lot worse than that as well. Online incel/manosphere movements prey on lonely young men, very often mentally ill, and turn them into violent nihilists ready to do harm to people around them, mostly women. This is really not that different in motivation to the 2014 Isla Vista shootings, but it goes back as far as 1989 with the École Polytechnique massacre. Now with internet echo chambers it’s accelerated alarmingly over the past few years, and this isn’t going to be the last event of this kind in the UK. 

Their OP went beyond that and was passing direct judgement on the forum membership, inferring our refusal to jump in with wide spread speculation on the tragedy when little was known and speculation added nothing and as you say the police had asked people to wait for good reason.

Given that the comparator for our “sad” silence was “feminist Twitter” it seems clear how we were being mis judged for our silence.

I did not take the silence as in any way tacit or overt support, or in any way gender aligned.  Far from it.  

I doubt SAF is in anyway inclined to violence but her habit of viewing absolutely everything as women being oppressed by men, isn't so different to the incel thinking but reversed

In the light of pleas from the police, and echoed by the press, last night, to please not speculate on this tragedy at a time when information was still coming in, I wonder what part of the appeal SAF failed to understand? 

I don't think she was judging you personally, you know you don't have to take personal offence at that.  Personally I disagree with her that the comparative silence on here was 'sad', but we all inhabit our bubbles and I can easily imagine how someone who spends a lot of time on 'feminist Twitter' might be a bit incredulous that the inhabitants of a slightly different bubble might not have heard of the 'incel' thing. 

It really isn't new, especially in North America (in social media terms our kinda sorta nearest neighbour thanks to our common language).  When I posted above I didn't realise that a related prosecution on terrorist charges had already taken place in the UK.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-55257183  (He was found guilty.)

Men, middle aged white men in particular, are rather overrepresented among those posting on this forum, even compared to the population of those reading UKC let alone the wider world.  It really isn't a good look a load of blokes getting unnecessarily huffy at SAF's comments and piling on a lot of the old "not all men".  There's really no need.

Take a look at the shooters online history. Given the things he was saying online before he committed this crime, it’s reasonable to come to the conclusion that this is another spree killing motivated by incel/misogynist subculture mixed with a history of mental illness.

How much of that was known at that point yesterday when those pleas were made, I don’t know. But given what is now known it’s pretty clear that these are inciting factors.

Agree - I didn’t take personal offence and I don’t believe I have suggested otherwise.  

I’m noting that they instantly jumped on this tragedy to aim a very thinly veiled allegation at the collective group of posters here, and giving my view on that.  I agree with MG’s comment,

I have no intention of piling on “not all men”.  There was no place for speculation and no need to use the tragedy to launch an accusation against the forum as a whole.  

Anyhow I’ll bow out and leave it. Best thing IMO would be to shunt this thread to the pub and have a separate discussion over the hyper polarised culture war in a more generic context or after more time has passed.

The subject of this thread is a mass murder perpetrated by a man motivated by an explicitly misogynist ideology.  Not one that embraces misogyny as a side hustle, like a lot violent ideologies, terrorists etc., but one that holds a particularly virulent kind of violent, entitled misogyny at it's absolute core.

That's just an offensively stupid comment to make.

Interesting that you direct your opprobrium towards the one who replied to the thread on Friday afternoon and not the one who started it on Thursday night.

The OP was just directing attention (perhaps rather pointlessly) to a breaking news story before any requests by the police not to speculate on motives.

No-one had responded to the OP until until SAP expressed surprise that that incident was not being discussed on here at a time when the pleas were being made.

 >It really isn't a good look a load of blokes getting unnecessarily huffy at SAF's comments and piling on a lot of the old "not all men". 

Am I allowed to get huffy at her calling me a racist and misrepresenting my comments as defending a murderer?

There's really no need for her to be deliberately offensive.

On the other hand, SAF did choose to exploit this incident to tastelessly pick another tedious unprovoked fight with them. There was really no need; they could have started a discussion on the incel issue without doing so.

It would be probably be better if none of us got huffy, if at all possible.  Tall order, but that does tend to be how we get to the place where this forum is at its absolute worst. 

There is a racist trope in the media (American media especially) that the colour of the skin of a mass murderer is what decides whether they are a 'terrorist' or 'mentally ill', a 'lone wolf' etc.  A large chunk of the American media and a lot of their politicians still refuse to classify mass murders carried out by members of white supremacist militias for explicitly political ends as terrorism. 
(And it isn't that long ago that the President of the USA described actual neo-nazis as 'very fine people'.)

I don't think she was calling you a racist, I think she was alluding to that and drawing parallels between your comments and that trope.  Dunno, her comments were less than crystal clear.

I don't think you were defending him, but while we're on the subject it did strike me as a bit bizarre that you counted the murderer as one of his own victims in your enthusiasm to refute everything that SAF has to say*.  Six people died, five of whom were murder victims.

*As if his murdering as many male victims as female ones would somehow have meant he couldn't have been motivated by his twisted misogynist ideology anyway.  It's pretty clear from similar atrocities carried out in the USA (where, as remarked on above, a mass shooting on this scale is just called 'Thursday') that those who buy into this shit often direct their fury towards other men.  Particularly those who (unlike them) have normal, healthy relationships with women.  His murdering a man and his young daughter could absolutely fit that pattern, or it could indeed have been a case of them just being there and catching his eye as he was randomly lashing out at anyone he encountered.

Well, no.  And I'm the last one entitled to lecture you about how you shouldn't be getting wound up by posts that you perceive as deliberately antagonistic.  But nobody has ever managed to make me look as much of an arse on here as I have whilst frothing with indignation, so I know what I'm on about when I say it's a tad counterproductive if you're looking to win an argument.  Also, aww Diddums.