A now-deleted Facebook page, which referenced the misogynist incel subculture, belonged to accused killer Alek Minassian, the platform has confirmed.
Facebook says it deleted the account in the aftermath of Monday’s van attack in Toronto.
Minassian had been active on the page as early as March 10, when he uploaded a profile picture.
Minassian made a court appearance Tuesday morning, where he was charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder in connection with a vehicle rampage on Toronto’s Yonge Street Monday afternoon.
The page’s only post appears to have been published just before the attack, at 1:27 p.m. (In the archived copy, the timestamp appears in GMT, the time in London.)
Here’s how we interpret this:
The first part involves details borrowed from the real military. Minassian was briefly in the armed forces in the fall of 2017 but asked to leave after 16 days of recruit training, Global News has confirmed. (The military’s main recruiting centre for southern Ontario is roughly at the centre of the area of the vehicle attack.)
Private (Recruit) Minassian
Private (Recruit) is a rank given to untrained junior soldiers, which distinguishes them from trained privates.
Infantry 00010
00010 is the military’s occupation code for non-officer infantrymen.
wishing to speak to Sgt 4chan please
4chan is a discussion board which has been linked to a variety of hoaxes and the alt-right meme Pepe the Frog.
C23249161
This does have the correct format for a military service number.
The Incel Rebellion has already begun!
Incels (it stands for “involuntarily celibate”) are a misogynist online culture of men who don’t have access to sex and believe they are entitled to it. A Reddit group catering to them had 40,000 users before it was banned in 2017 under a policy that forbids inciting violence against identifiable groups.
“Almost all agree that the world (women) owes them sex and that they are oppressed for being sexless men,” wrote U.S. academic Ross Haenfler. “Ideally, incels would be able to have access to women’s bodies whenever without any backlash — or input from women.”
“Obviously the hatred of women and the expectations incels have for them are contradictory, so involuntary celibacy perpetuates itself.”
We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys!
In the incel subculture, Chads and Stacys are (respectively) men and women who are sexually active.
All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!
Elliot Rodger killed six people near the University of California, Santa Barbara campus in 2014 before killing himself. In a video shot before his death, Rodger complained about still being a virgin at 22, and described himself as a “supreme gentleman.”
However, some things remain unclear about Minassian’s account:
- Somebody liked Minassian’s post on Monday — it’s not clear who.
- Also, somebody saved a copy of the account into archives.is on Monday just before 4 p.m., over an hour before the earliest announcement of Minassian’s name. How did they know to do that?