It looks like Alek Minassian, the man who, police say, killed ten people in a van attack in Toronto Monday, had written a Facebook post praising Elliot Rodger earlier that day. Rodger, of course, is the young California man whose 2014 shooting rampage came after he left a hateful and misogynistic manifesto lamenting his failures with women.
It wouldn’t be surprising if Minassian was inspired by Rodger. As Allegra Kirkland reports, Rodger has become an icon of sorts for some of the more extreme members of the online men’s rights and “incel” (“involuntarily celibate”) communities, who have hailed him as “the only one who ever stood up for us,” by being willing to violently avenge the crime of women not wanting to have sex with them. And this rancid subculture increasingly has ties to the broader alt-right.
