[RD] Toronto van attack

[Narz]

The cool thing about people like this is that as racist and Islamophobic as the basically all white male incel crowd is, their toxic masculinity and the way it manifests itself via violence is way, way more similar to religious extremists than they would ever admit to.

The phrase 'toxic masculinity' is so dumb, these guys have a lack of masculinity (both self-perception, perception from others, likely a severe lack of male support/guidance and role models), more like masculinity deficiency.

Also, is this group all-white? Is that perception based on anything? I'd imagine a ton of them are Asian.

 

[inthesomeday]

Also, is this group all-white? Is that perception based on anything? I'd imagine a ton of them are Asian.

Oh boy

 

[Synobun]

I don't buy the argument that exposing sex workers to risk would significantly sway the Incels crowd.

 

[metatron]

I just love watching the medias (and some security people) all going "We can't be sure what the motivation is, maybe it's mental illness?"

If someone went and posted "Death to the infidels and the Great Satan! The Jihad has begun! Allah is great!" on FAcebook just before killing ten people, nobody would question their motivation. But here we have an equally clear statement (that some press outlet have nonetheless labeled "enigmatic"), just for a different ideology, and suddenly "It's a mystery" and "We're not sure whether there's any ideological underpinning to the attack".

It's like it's hard to say that the motivation was a radical misogynist ideology that blames women (and men successful with women) for their own perceived inadequacy, and that (in its more extreme forms) advocate violence against women (and against men who get along with women) as a mean of "getting even". Even when the attacker stated it as plainly as he possibly could.

1. "Medias"? No.

2. I don't think you are correct about said media.
Yesterday i wrote a response to AJs rant on that datum and then didn't send it because it felt like spoiling the short-and-snappy nature of the rants thread (and because i love me my AJ).
I will now show it to you, unaltered:

Spoiler :

The whole coverage of this is pissing me off. The guy is white so it is "mental illness" rather than "terrorism".
View attachment 494217

Yet whenever someone other than whitey goes on a mass killing they are called a terrorist first and foremost. A couple years ago a guy in St Cloud, who was Muslim with some pretty severe mental health issues went on a stabbing spree and yelled something about ISIS. As a result, the media turned it into a "ISIS HAS AGENTS IN THE HEART OF MINNESOTA" on the front page. That the guy had severe mental health issues was quietly mentioned below the fold on page 4.

Well, it's not like the conduct of US liberals in the aftermath of mass shootings was exactly stellar.
I vaguely remember parts of the liberal punditry going full mental-illness-no-terrorism-to-be-seen-self-hating-homophobe on Omar Mateen, with pretty much no shame and very little respect for his own testimony.

Or you remember the first 48 hours of reflection on the mental state of one Mr. Loughner?
Ooooh! Oh, how hard some tried to convince at least themselves that this was the face of a cold-blooded, strategically thinking right-wing terrorist.


Another thought on the matter:
It is indeed curious how many cooky mass shooters are, you know, "white".
And we may wonder in what other ways the US is exceptional, besides lack of gun control.
And we may draft a three or four item short list of the major things American society tends to screw POCs out of.
Gee, i wonder where those three lines intersect ...


Is there more?
Is there another American exception in all this?
Oh right, subjectively estimated 117% of these guys show up to their shooting sprees clad in camouflage and other pointless battle gear. They either are in the military or want to be in the military or are obsessed with police work or security work.
And of course we can follow both lines of coincidence all the way back to Wayne Harris being an Air Force pilot and the USMC rejecting Eric Harris with hateful ableist prejudice, what with him having too little blood in his Luvox.

And now i am sitting here looking at pictures of Anders Breivik, Beate Zschäpe and Ali Sonboli.
And you know what they have in common?
They don't look as high as a kite.
And then there are Bilal Hadfi and Abdelhamid Abaaoud and all the others. And flicking through the pictures there too is this apparent lack of people who are obviously missing Prince's bathrobe...


What was my point? Oh right:
Compared to Europe most mass killers in the US (and Canada) belong in the upper half of that chart, no matter their complexion.
Both liberals and conservatives however have incentives not to admit how comparatively little terrorism and how comparatively much nutty violence Americans face.

Point being: A general right wing bias or some such in the labeling of mass shooters (or, apparently, van drivers) is at least debatable.
[Let me correct myself: In parts of the US people don't face "little terrorism". I recklessly failed to appreciate terrorism below the level of mass murder there. E.g. things like arson and modern day quasi-lynchings etc.
But i promised "unaltered", so there that goes...]

Anyway... so the guy had been in the CAF. Have we checked his medicine cabinet?


3. Yes, it is enigmatic. To you and me that's clear text, to Hobbs and Inno it evidently isn't/wasn't.
I am making the wild guess that they are representative of 99% of the public.

So Chad is JFK and JFK is Chad?
and Bill Clinton is Chad?

Good one.

Especially how he took down the suspect without firing a shot.
Cop:Get Down!
Suspect:I have a gun!
Cop: I don't care! Get down!

Well, the cop displayed risk acceptance.
Which is interesting in this context, mostly because few things appear as unevenly distributed in terms of sex and gender as risk acceptence.
One may go as far as to say the cop's "toxic masculinity" saved the perps life.

Also, is this group all-white? Is that perception based on anything? I'd imagine a ton of them are Asian.

Oh boy

Ok. So we will consider anyone who appears to be part of this and happens to be not uber-anglo-saxon-snow-white as an anomaly.
We'll maintain a running count.
Well, there's the son of Li Chin Rodger.
*lickingpencil*
One.

 

[red_elk]

Legalization of prostitution would probably help alot.

And a volunteer help service, for those who can't afford it

 

[warpus]

Everyone seems to hate pickup coaches too, probably no one more than these 'incels'.

Legalization of prostitution would probably help alot (although the main problem is likely emotional not sexual)

Yeah, I saw one of these people asking for help in /r/relationships on reddit a while ago. The only woman he had been with was a prostitute. His sexual needs were satisfied, but he wanted a girlfriend, not just sex. Mind you his ideas about women were all warped and a bit crazy, but I don't think these people just want sex, like you say

 

[Lexicus]

The phrase 'toxic masculinity' is so dumb, these guys have a lack of masculinity (both self-perception, perception from others, likely a severe lack of male support/guidance and role models), more like masculinity deficiency.

This doesn't even make any sense. "Toxic masculinity" largely refers to the harmful patterns of thought and behavior that result from this perceived deficiency. what you are saying doesn't even remotely "disprove" (or obviate the need for) the concept of toxic masculinity.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

That's fine, but it sort of forces me to think up examples of evidence that would work, so that I can examine your position further and respond to it. But the thing is that my position is that evidence alone will probably not help much, so as a result I can't think of any good examples. All I can think of are bad examples like tabulated data in the form of a spreadsheet. If I could think of a good example then I would probably not hold the position that I do, so perhaps by offering a better example you can help convince me of your point of view

This is only an issue because of the typical association of "evidence" as things like numbers or items in a courtroom. Anything you can observe can be taken as evidence.

He’s definitely partly to blame, yeah. Society is too.

He is nearly entirely to blame.

In the possibility space of "people generated by society", this particular outcome is rare. We do not, on average, anticipate that an arbitrary person in the context of society is or will become a mass murderer. There is a good reason for that; society generally looks down on and punishes mass murderers. There is actually very little in the way of tangible benefit to committing mass murder. Even if one is completely devoid of ethical influence, the value proposition for the kind of action in this particular news story makes the choice nonsense.

A scenario where society actively disincentivizes an action that has awful upside and tremendous downside for both the criminal and his victims is not a scenario where it is reasonable to conclude that a person nevertheless making this choice somehow reflects society.

Everyone seems to hate pickup coaches too, probably no one more than these 'incels'.

Legalization of prostitution would probably help alot (although the main problem is likely emotional not sexual)

Thruout history a large minority of males likely did not get any sex at all, but these were the low status males and just had to take their lot. Now with access to cheap powerful firearms they can make themselves known.

I doubt legalization of prostitution does anybody good in this case. It has some pretty obvious ethical issues in terms of influence on women, and it's not a compelled transaction so women would likely avoid incels anyway (I doubt most incels have a ton of cash, and those that do and are nevertheless identifying as incel have issues a professional sex worker is likely to identify and avoid). It looks like a strict net negative to me, unless I'm missing something.

I don't see an issue with pickup coaches if what they teach is consistent with reality. However, it's not exactly a regulated industry when it comes to what a random person might teach.

 

[Lexicus]

This is only an issue because of the typical association of "evidence" as things like numbers or items in a courtroom. Anything you can observe can be taken as evidence.

I took your point to be that you have to prove to people that their ideology is wrong, using evidence. If that's not what you meant (and it seems that it isn't)we don't really disagree. But then what you said is less about having some degree of open-mindedness to new facts and more along the lines of "people who aren't totally psychotic can leave cults."

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I took your point to be that you have to prove to people that their ideology is wrong, using evidence. If that's not what you meant (and it seems that it isn't)we don't really disagree. But then what you said is less about having some degree of open-mindedness to new facts and more along the lines of "people who aren't totally psychotic can leave cults."

True, we don't really disagree on that point, but you still need to discern that they're not totally psychotic and help them start seeing the cult (and the rest of the world outside of the cult) for what they are.

Unfortunately some people are totally psychotic and I'm not too confident it's easy to tell the difference up front in such scenarios.

 

[Lexicus]

Unfortunately some people are totally psychotic and I'm not too confident it's easy to tell the difference up front in such scenarios.

Well, obviously we're all a little psychotic. As I keep saying, there is no such thing as privileged access to reality, we are stuck interpreting it through a flawed medium that evolved to tell each other where the fruit was and when a predator was coming.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Well, obviously we're all a little psychotic. As I keep saying, there is no such thing as privileged access to reality, we are stuck interpreting it through a flawed medium that evolved to tell each other where the fruit was and when a predator was coming.

On that I do disagree, there is some privilege. Some people are (in testable fashion) significantly better at accessing and anticipating reality than other people. The wider range of us are still largely functional day to day, in that the majority of our beliefs in practice match anticipated consequences as measured by others.

Not everyone is equally functional, and unfortunately some really do struggle with the whole anticipated reality vs what happens thing.

 

[inthesomeday]

In the possibility space of "people generated by society", this particular outcome is rare. We do not, on average, anticipate that an arbitrary person in the context of society is or will become a mass murderer. There is a good reason for that; society generally looks down on and punishes mass murderers. There is actually very little in the way of tangible benefit to committing mass murder. Even if one is completely devoid of ethical influence, the value proposition for the kind of action in this particular news story makes the choice nonsense.

Society doesn’t always build mass murderers, true, but it builds plenty of sexists. I don’t think this is one of those (imaginary) situations where some guy just really had a hankering for mass murder, he was very specifically motivated by a socially constructed ideology.

 

[Kozmos]

On that I do disagree, there is some privilege. Some people are (in testable fashion) significantly better at accessing and anticipating reality than other people. The wider range of us are still largely functional day to day, in that the majority of our beliefs in practice match anticipated consequences as measured by others.

*cough* depressed people *cough*

 

[Lexicus]

Society doesn’t always build mass murderers, true, but it builds plenty of sexists. I don’t think this is one of those (imaginary) situations where some guy just really had a hankering for mass murder, he was very specifically motivated by a socially constructed ideology.

I mean. We have this image that society projects of what's "supposed" to happen, which teaches men to feel like a female SO is their due in life. For example, our very own @Mouthwash basically has argued that men are entitled to sex from women. This idea doesn't come from nowhere.

We also have this image that playing the role of masculinity requires callousness and violence. This is very similar to the point that Noel Ignatiev makes in How the Irish Became White, where Irish people became absorbed into whiteness by playing the role required of them, which was to inflict terroristic violence on black people.

So the idea that we can "get our own back" from society by killing people also doesn't come from nowhere.

It's also worth pointing out that for people in their 20s, they have hardly known a time when the US wasn't at war. That, too, is going to have social consequences. There is a good book out now about how the Vietnam War had this effect on what the author calls the White Power movement:
https://www.npr.org/2018/04/25/6056...ower-movement-coalesced-after-the-vietnam-war

Early in the research, I wondered if this was as simple as veterans being radicalized during war and returning home to foment violence, but I don’t think it’s that simple. There is scholarship that shows that the surge in violence actually appears throughout American society in all genders and age groups in the aftermath of warfare.

So there’s something more fundamental going on here, and it could be as simple as the state unleashing all this violence during war and then it’s unable to control it afterward, but I’m not convinced that’s the whole story.

If you look at the 20th century, especially the second half, there’s hardly a time when we’re not at war in some place. So there’s this perpetual engagement in state violence, and we should expect that violence to reverberate throughout society during and after war.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Society doesn’t always build mass murderers, true, but it builds plenty of sexists. I don’t think this is one of those (imaginary) situations where some guy just really had a hankering for mass murder, he was very specifically motivated by a socially constructed ideology.

This is not an assertion/belief that pays rent. You might as well credit society for literally everything good and bad then, which is not a useful delineation.

The reality is that society intentionally assigns his action a terrible value proposition, in contrast with say becoming a dentist for example. He still chose mass murder. That's on him.

 

[inthesomeday]

This is not an assertion/belief that pays rent. You might as well credit society for literally everything good and bad then, which is not a useful delineation.

All the ones that come out of society, yeah. There’s no evidence of ideologically motivated mass murder before agriculture, pal.

The reality is that society intentionally assigns his action a terrible value proposition, in contrast with say becoming a dentist for example. He still chose mass murder. That's on him.

Well there are two things in isolation here that we’re trying to examine, right? Sexist ideology, and mass murder. I would argue that American society has consistently supported both of them. Mass murderers get called heroes in America as long as the people they murdered were from another country. Even when they kill people in America they receive a whole lot of attention— true, mostly negative, but it’s evident these people are lacking in attention. And it obviously supports sexist ideology.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

There’s no evidence of ideologically motivated mass murder before agriculture, pal.

That's a pretty absurd and arbitrary bar. What kind of "ideology" existed in hunter-gatherer days, aside from the one where if the competition is too great you could kill people and take their stuff...without consequences if their defense didn't injure you?

We still see the occasionally internal killing from the great apes, though they lack the tools where one can reasonably kill many others quickly.

Well there are two things in isolation here that we’re trying to examine, right? Sexist ideology, and mass murder. I would argue that American society has consistently supported both of them. Mass murderers get called heroes in America as long as the people they murdered were from another country. Even when they kill people in America they receive a whole lot of attention— true, mostly negative, but it’s evident these people are lacking in attention. And it obviously supports sexist ideology.

If you're looking to establish a decent causal link you're going to have to do much, much better than this.

 

[inthesomeday]

That's a pretty absurd and arbitrary bar. What kind of "ideology" existed in hunter-gatherer days, aside from the one where if the competition is too great you could kill people and take their stuff...without consequences if their defense didn't injure you?

Yeah, there was no ideology before society. That’s the whole point here fam.

If you're looking to establish a decent causal link you're going to have to do much, much better than this.

No I’m not. All I’m doing is disputing your positive claim that American society actively shames mass murder.

 

[warpus]

This is only an issue because of the typical association of "evidence" as things like numbers or items in a courtroom. Anything you can observe can be taken as evidence.

But you still don't have an answer for me.

Isn't it better to say: "I don't know how to fix this" instead of saying "Let's show them something, I have no idea what at all, I can't even suggest anything, but let's show them stuff" ?