As the motive remains unclear as to why Alek Minassian allegedly killed 10 people with a rental van in Toronto on Monday, the 25-year-old is being praised by misogynistic communities of the dark web.
Minassian, of Richmond Hill, Ont., was named Monday as the alleged driver of a white van that was used in the rampage that stretched about a kilometre in the city’s North York neighbourhood.
Global News obtained a Facebook post Monday that Minassian wrote, just before carrying out his rampage, where he praised the “Incel Rebellion,” and California mass-killer Elliot Rodger, just before carrying out the rampage.
READ MORE: What we learned from Alek Minassian’s Incel-linked Facebook page – and what we’d like to know
“The Incel Rebellion has already begun!” reads the post. “We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”
Incels, or “involuntarily celibate” is a misogynist online culture of men who don’t have access to sex and believe it’s a basic human right. Following Monday’s carnage, members of the incel community praised the Toronto truck attack, calling for similar action, saying “it’s now or never.”
“More trucks of peace,” one so-called incel commented, presumably referencing the rental van used in the massacre.
“I don’t have a good enough weapon,” another poster said. “Neither did this guy, get a car you cuck!” a fellow incel replied.
“I will have one celebratory beer for every victim that turns out to be a young woman between 18-35,” another user said.
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According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that monitors hate groups and extremists, incels stem from the pickup artist movement, a culture that offers men tips to persuade women to sleep with them. When theses pickup tips fail them, the men become bitter.
READ MORE: Toronto van attack suspect allegedly posted about mass killer Elliot Rodger
“Prepare the way to incel sainthood for Sir Alek,” reads another post.
In Minassian’s Facebook posting, he mentioned Elliot Rodger, who, as the Southern Poverty Law Center notes, is seen as the incel community’s “patron saint.”
“They celebrate his tactics, his body count and, of course, his manifesto, and write wistfully of a violent uprising yet to come,” Rachel Janik noted in a blog post. “They glorify Rodger’s attack using the shorthand, ‘going ER.’”
Rodger killed six people in 2014 in a vehicle and shooting rampage. Before carrying out the act, Rodger posted a video blasting the women who rejected him and the men who weren’t rejected and were sexually active.
“I’ll take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you,” he said. “I don’t know why you girls are so repulsed by me.”
READ MORE: Identifying those killed in Toronto van attack could take days, coroner says
Earlier this year, the Southern Poverty Law Center added male supremacy to what the group tracks as hate “because of the way these groups consistently denigrate and dehumanize women, often including advocating physical and sexual violence against them.”
Rodger’s actions have been labelled a hate crime by some.