When a Mass Murderer Has a Cult Following

Unlike other mass murderers — Dylann Roof, Anders Behring Breivik, or even the Unabomber — the suspect in the Toronto van assault that killed ten and wounded 15 others earlier this calendar week didn't leave behind a manifesto.

Instead, he dropped a cursory status update on Facebook: "The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!" To some observers, this must have seemed as cryptic as the Zodiac killer's coded messages. But to those familiar with the misogynist "incel subculture" the message Alek Minassian was trying to ship was crystal clear: his alleged deed of terrorism was intended as a tribute of sorts to Elliot Rodger — mass murderer and patron saint of the internet's "involuntary celibates."

Information technology'southward been nearly iv years since Rodger killed six (and and then himself) in a rampage in Isla Vista, California — an act that he saw as an act of "retribution" confronting the women of the world, those "mean, savage and heartless creatures" who had collectively rejected him, according to his lengthy manifesto, My Twisted World. Just the cult of "Saint Elliot" — every bit his more than fervent fans like to call him — is nevertheless going strong.

Elliot Rodgers, also known merely equally ER by his admirers, has emerged as the patron saint of online misogynists. His likeness has inspired countless memes that straddle the line betwixt lulzy irony and utter sincerity (one widely circulated picture depicts him as a literal saint, his face Photoshopped into a religious painting). ER's admirers on 4chan and Reddit also celebrate "Saint Elliot Day" on May 23, the anniversary of his murder spree. Others write strange tribute songs to honor their murderous hero. At that place are Elliot Rodger T-shirts, and Elliot Rodger T-shirt unboxing videos.

The canonization of Elliot Rodger has a sure twisted logic to it. Misogynists, like conservatives more generally, are fans of hierarchy — and tend to believe that those at the summit of the heap deserve to exist there. This tin easily lead to hero worship that strikes everyone else as vaguely absurd: the semi-ironic talk from men of the alt-correct about "God Emperor" Trump, or Milo Yiannopoulos's cringy addiction of calling Trump "daddy." And so it shouldn't come as a daze that incels feel the aforementioned sort of reverence toward Rodger — a guy who went out and did what well-nigh incels only dream of doing.

At present, with less than a month to get earlier this year's Saint Elliot Day, incels are embracing Minassian every bit the newest addition to the sainthood. On Tuesday, a commenter on Incels.me posted a film of a makeshift shrine to the suspected terrorist, complete with a votive candle, hailing him as "our new saint." "A warrior of incelibacy," added another commenter, "peace be upon his soul."

Elsewhere on Incels.me, Minassian's newly minted fans hailed the newly minted saint for bringing so much media attending to their movement and thereby bringing their darkly misogynist "blackpill" truths to the masses. "Saint Alek's bravery might accept merely woken upwardly 1,000's upon one,000's of incels," i commenter happily proclaimed. "Welcome, men."

But it's hard to imagine this new saint taking over Saint Elliot's top spot. At a time when so much of net culture is drenched in multiple layers of irony, it'southward surprising how dreadfully hostage and dedicated Rodger's fanboys — and even a few fangirls — tend to exist.

In a postal service from 4chan now circulating as a screenshot, one anonymous channer offered a surprisingly heartfelt tribute to "the Patron Saint of r9k," a message board on 4chan popular with incels. "Rest in Peace Elliot Rodger," it began. "Your Day of Retribution was more than a service to gild; it was a souvenir to men similar u.s. men who, despite the supposed equality of America, were left to suffer as virgins. The but painful aspect of this otherwise joyous occasion is the knowledge that you'll never know the extent of the psychological damage you caused. … perhaps we can join each other in [the] afterlife and and so we'll have an eternity to spend together discussing the putrid nature of the sluts nosotros so despise."

The author ended with a poem:

If I should die, think simply this of me

That in that location's some obscure corner of the cyberspace

That is forever defended to Elliot

Rodger's fans show upwards in the strangest of places. In the Singles & Dating section of Yahoo! Answers, a young human being identifying himself only as Topher wonders aloud if it is somehow wrong that he admires Rodger every bit much equally he does.

"I'll exist 20 years old in November and ever since I was in sixth form I've had trouble getting a girlfriend," he writes. "It seems that around the time we all hit puberty girls accept become picky with the type of guys they'll get out with. I'yard relatively attractive, I accept a perfect facial structure with light brown hair that I style with expensive hair products. I have the newest iPhone, I have an Apple Sentry, I take a BMW, I take prissy dress and a good corporeality of money to compliment a girls expensive tastes. Yet for some reason girls are e'er dating losers who are bankrupt and treat them poorly. … I see happy couples at my higher and I want to kill them. … I want to ruin their happiness and kill them all. I know how Elliot felt and I … admire him so much. Is this a bad affair?"

Just the creepiest paeans to Rodger are found not on 4chan, not lurking in "some obscure corner of the net" only rather hiding in plain sight on YouTube, where Elliot Rodger tribute videos accept become about a genre unto themselves. In ane such video, Wiz Khalifa's sentimental "See You lot Again" from the Furious seven soundtrack plays over family photos of Rodger, clips from Rodger's own videos — and surveillance footage of convenience-store customers fleeing in terror equally Rodger shot up the store. A YouTuber calling himself Babe Elliot — and using a babyhood photo of Rodger as his avatar — has put up no less than three lovingly crafted if decidedly amateur musical tributes to his hero.

In an even more unsettling tribute video, one young Christian explains how much he admires Rodger and understands the murderous impulses that led him to kill — though the video maker assures us that since he has establish Christ he won't himself "go around killing people for fun."

There are an assortment of original tribute songs — some jokes, some utterly sincere, and all the same others that could well exist either. In i, a human singing so softly he might equally well be whispering performs a musical number called "My Twisted World: Official Elliot Rodger Song," which seems to consist mostly of the phrase "my day of retribution" chanted over and over once more. The video from 2022 had garnered 115 views and a single comment: "How stoned were you lot?"

Rodger is inappreciably the first murderer with a cult post-obit. He'due south non even the starting time misogynist killer to have been proclaimed a "saint" — that laurels goes to "Saint" Marc Lépine, who murdered 14 women in cold claret at Montreal's École Polytechnique in 1989. But Lépine was never embraced every bit a "saint" past anyone other than a pocket-size handful of extremist Men'southward Rights Activists looking to offend as many feminists as possible. Rodger's fanbase, for amend and for worse, is much broader and much less ideological; many of his admirers seem to identify with him much more fully.

This could be in part because he showed united states of america so much of himself in his videos and in his manifesto. When I offset saw his videos four years ago in the wake of his set on, he came across as a deeply troubled fellow whose manner was a mixture of awkward and arrogant. Watching his videos once again today, I can come across glimpses of the foreign charisma. His awkwardness, to his fans at to the lowest degree, comes across as an appealing sort of vulnerability; his sneering arrogance, no matter how contrived information technology often seems in these videos, comes across every bit confidence.

It'southward hard to imagine Minassian developing a similarly devoted post-obit. So far he seems a nada. He left behind no videos that might humanize him to potential fans. His "manifesto" was a brusque, impersonal paragraph, petty more than than a mash-up of incel clichés.

Philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach famously argued that faith was in essence a projection of our hopes and desires: "what human wishes to be, he makes his God." It seems clear that Elliot Rodger's fans are guilty of a similar sort of projection: in many ways they want tobe Elliot, and then they have made him their "saint."

When a Mass Murderer Has a Cult Following