Mass murder prevented in Bordeaux: what is an incel?

On Thursday 23 May, the Olympic flame passed through Bordeaux. An event that could have turned into a bloodbath, if the morbid plan of a 26-year-old masculinist had not been foiled in time. The man, presented on his Facebook account as “Sentenced to Incel dreams for almost 6 years”he explained in police custody that he hated women and adored Elliot Rodger, perpetrator of a misogynistic mass murder in the United States on May 23, 2014.

According to his confession, the Bordeaux man would have in turn planned an act followed by a suicide on the day of the passage of the flame (without, as mentioned, an explicit connection being made with the Olympic event). Mediapart), because the date coincided with the tenth anniversary of the attack perpetrated by Elliot Rodger.

What is the incel movement?

The incel movement, of which the suspect claims to be part, is an English contraction of the words “ involuntary celibate “, “involuntary bachelor in French”. As summarized very well Mediapart :

Incels, these misogynistic groups born in North America, they theorize that women deny men the sexuality to which they should be entitled. In an indictment, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (Pnat) highlighted that “This misogynistic and hateful reading is mixed with ideological sources ultra-right ». A part of the movement, steeped in white supremacism, believes in particular that multicultural societies “distancing white women from white men”.

Several infamous incels have put their misogynistic hatred into action. Elliot Rodger, therefore, but also the Canadian Alek Minassian, who in 2018 drove his van into the crowd, killing eight women. A few hours before his gesture, he had written on Facebook “The incel rebellion has already begun”.

Some resources to go further

Numerous podcasts, documentaries, and essays examine this movement. Here is a small example:

• The BBC documentary In the secret world of incelsfollows three men who identify themselves as incel.
• This video to miss where Mymy returns to these single men who hate women, sometimes to the point of killing them.
• The documentary Shy Guys: IRL by Sara Gardephe
• The documentary by France Télévisions Mascus, these men who hate womenreleased this year, which analyzes the viral progression of masculinism in France, facilitated in particular by social networks such as TikTok.
• This is the testimony of a repentant former Incel, who demonstrates that it is possible to escape from this hateful ideology.

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