Several people shot dead in Plymouth 12 August 2021

[hitmouse]

It's been a new and unwanted discovery for me as well, but I don't really touch social media so it's easy for this sort of thing to pass me by. Is there a reason they should be better known though...? Is this the first case of incel-origin violence in the UK or has there been a long history of it already?

This is the first one I'm aware of, but Elliot Rodger in 2014 and the Toronto van attack in 2018 were pretty high-profile, I thought. More here, if anyone fancies some cheery reading.

 

[Shechemite]

Because it’s the intersection of personal biography — the whole biography — with social factors — all the social factors — that creates responses, habits, behaviour and whatever else you want to talk about. You can’t just isolate one part of it and say, “Aha! This part is the same for these two people so it must not be relevant to their differences!”

im (still) hungover. Explain this is a little bit

 

[Orang Utan]

im (still) hungover. Explain this is a little bit

deffo hungover as you’ve attributed a response to Edie as her own words

 

[bimble]

This is the first one I'm aware of, but Elliot Rodger in 2014 and the Toronto van attack in 2018 were pretty high-profile, I thought. More here, if anyone fancies some cheery reading.

Uplifting link thanks for that.
It’s so tempting to blame The Internet for this whole radicalisation & worldview isn’t it.

 

[LeytonCatLady]

Just saw this. Extra disturbing because the second bit looks perfectly normal and sane.

View attachment 283527

I loved this woman's response:

 

[scifisam]

Not machetes then. And that's not owning, but buying, selling, etc.

It sounds like I'm being pendantic but it is important when in a discussion you just say something is illegal when it isn't.

Pedantic. /True pedant

The argument was that he could just as easily have killed five people with a knife. But it'd be pretty hard for him to legally own a machete by the common definition of them, or any very large knife - because he's 22 and couldn't legally have obtained one before the ban. And taking them outside the house would be illegal. When the argument is that legal weapons can cause just add much damage as a gun, it is important to note that, for all practical purposes, they are not legal weapons after all.

 

[LDC]

I loved this woman's response:

Just looked at that bloke's Twitter and website, totally fucked up on so many levels. What an absolute horrendous prick.

 

[LeytonCatLady]

Just looked at that bloke's Twitter and website, totally fucked up on so many levels. What an absolute horrendous prick.

I wouldn't mind betting he's probably an antivaxxer, too.

 

[LDC]

Pedantic. /True pedant

The argument was that he could just as easily have killed five people with a knife. But it'd be pretty hard for him to legally own a machete by the common definition of them, or any very large knife - because he's 22 and couldn't legally have obtained one before the ban. And taking them outside the house would be illegal. When the argument is that legal weapons can cause just add much damage as a gun, it is important to note that, for all practical purposes, they are not legal weapons after all.

MACHETES ARE NOT BANNED.

First Google result Machetes

 

[Puddy_Tat]

I wouldn't mind betting he's probably an antivaxxer, too.

I got far enough to see that he's anti covid restrictions (didn't spot anything specifically about vaccinations) and a climate change denier.

'prick' does not quite seem adequate...

 

[scifisam]

MACHETES ARE NOT BANNED.

First Google result Machetes

Read my post before shouting at me you rude fucking arsehole.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

I wouldn't mind betting he's probably an antivaxxer, too.

Oh there’s a whole list of things you can absolutely guarantee about people like that.

 

[Cid]

I think with knives etc the ban of longer things was more based on the moral panic around zombie knives etc. Doesn't really have any grounding in the practical reality of knife crime... Having a weapon over 50cm doesn't really make a great deal of difference. Arguably harder to use tbh.

 

[LDC]

Edited, can't be arsed.

 

[Ax^]

MACHETES ARE NOT BANNED.

First Google result Machetes

small machetes are not banned has to be below 50 cm

has to be less than 2 foot

so a big kitchen knife

 

[bimble]

Machetes are a totally normal thing to own & carry around in some places in the world which have had zero terrorist murderer issues. Wrong tree entirely imo.

 

[LDC]

Machetes are generally less than 50cm. But even if they're over that they're still not banned from ownership or use outside the house with good reason.

The law was written to exclude samurai swords (it excludes older swords) as there were a few incidences with them, and they used to be for sale in some city centre shops years ago, and I guess there were things like films that fueled their use briefly, and they're fucking intimidating.

 

[Ax^]

the law was writted to exclude Zombie knifes

wtf is a machette

 

[Dandred]

 

[LDC]

Machetes are a totally normal thing to own & carry around in some places in the world which have had zero terrorist murderer issues. Wrong tree entirely imo.

Could say the same with firearms though?

 

[bimble]

wtf is a machette

A machete is used same as a scythe, for cutting through overgrown plants. It is a totally normal & necessary thing to have and carry with you in lots of places that do not suffer from incels.

Could say the same with firearms though?

Yeah, at the risk of being absurd i do think that, it is not the tools that are the problem or at fault.

 

[brogdale]

Reality beginning to look more and more like a Cold War Steve piece:

 

[Cid]

You can also still own/buy any long weapon provided it was made pre-1954 or using traditional methods.

The 'traditional method' bit there is quite important as, judging by a quick google, that is quite flexible.

 

[existentialist]

Pedantic. /True pedant

The argument was that he could just as easily have killed five people with a knife. But it'd be pretty hard for him to legally own a machete by the common definition of them, or any very large knife - because he's 22 and couldn't legally have obtained one before the ban. And taking them outside the house would be illegal. When the argument is that legal weapons can cause just add much damage as a gun, it is important to note that, for all practical purposes, they are not legal weapons after all.

I legally own a machete. I bought it on the Internet, and it arrived by post. I bought it to clear brambles in the garden, but I could just as easily have been a 22 year old virgin with an, aha haha, axe to grind.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Perhaps a bit late, but the general slagging of men in the "incel" crowd as sad losers who can't get a girlfriend, probably smell, why don't they dress better, etc etc is really counter-productive and part of the toxic masculinity culture that gets them there in the first place.

 

[bimble]

Perhaps a bit late, but the general slagging of men in the "incel" crowd as sad losers who can't get a girlfriend, probably smell, why don't they dress better, etc etc is really counter-productive and part of the toxic masculinity culture that gets them there in the first place.

yep. I've managed to not click on the guy's videos but did read that, in the background of the last one, there was his collection of weightlifting kit.
He was saying that he tried all that, he worked out so as to loose weight so as to look better, thinking that might solve his existential problems but it didn't and so he'd given up.
A little while ago i reckon he probably started off by trying to buy a nice t shirt. These things are not the causes.

 

[Ax^]

don't look up his reddit or other place history

all of it just has alarm bells ringing as why he had a licease

 

[kabbes]

im (still) hungover. Explain this is a little bit

In the rush to avoid social reductionism, there is a danger in adopting a individualised view of the self, in which the individuals simply manifest context-free choice. There are many ways out of this dualism, based around the ideas that (a) society is crucial to self-formation (either by mediating its creation ("culture in mind") or by determining the nature of interactions ("mind in culture")); and (b) so are specific personal relationships and events, which have the impact of creating some kind of internal frame of reference for how to interact with that society. In other words, what matters is how the personal biography intersects with the impacts being created by society. I've also seen all this referred to as the intrapsychic (entirely personal), interpsychic (social interaction) and extrapsychic (impact of wider society) domains.

The ways that all these things actually happen is hotly contested, and I could point to numerous parts of psychology that all angrily disagree with each other about this. However, of particular interest for this specific case might be a "psychosocial approach", which combines psychodynamic ideas of how crucial relationships become embedded into future interactions with a sociocultural approach to how the self is formed within a society. The reason this approach is pertinent is because it has become a way in which lone wolf terrorism in particular has been analysed. Search for "psychosocial study lone wolf terrorism" and you'll find all sorts.

Meloy and Yakeley (2014) -- Sci-Hub | The Violent True Believer as a “Lone Wolf” - Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Terrorism | 10.1002/bsl.2109 -- was one of the first papers I read on this. It's pretty readable, if you fancy it. They employed the ideas of splitting (an internal process in which good and bad parts of us are "split" as an internal defence mechanism) and projection (a process by which the split bad part can then be viewed as external and attacked) in their psychosocial investigation into why some individuals become “lone wolf” terrorists, while others from the same environment do not. They first used social psychological theories of group identity to discuss the way in which extremist identities become formed in general. However, even whilst acknowledging these processes (and the social, religious, and political forces that underly the formation of extremist ideologies), they go on to point out that “in the final analysis [terrorist acts] are personal... and the individual’s own mind is what differentiates him from the many who are protestors or extremists who do not carry out acts of violence.”

Meloy and Yakeley's explanation is that whilst terrorist violence certainly conveys conscious political or religious messages (which makes critical the social environment that creates the belief that the violence is necessary), it also communicates unconscious meanings (which are derived from personal biography). Interestingly, Meloy and Yakeley also identified that lone wolf terrorists typically exhibit vicarious, not personal, experience of the group trauma that frames their act. In other words, they typically do not desire retribution for personal ill-treatment but, rather, identify with a wronged group and then project both personal and group failings onto third parties. Although the paper is about religious fundamentalist terrorism, I think it's still very relevant to incels.

Anyway, regardless of whether or not this specifically is the right approach, it certainly seems important to me that both social context and personal biography are taken into account when considering this.

 

[tim]

There seems to be a lot more sympathy and understanding for this man than is shown on the thread about Shamima Begum.

 

[kabbes]

There seems to be a lot more sympathy and understanding for this man than is shown on the thread about Shamima Begum.

Can you point to one drop of sympathy?

As to "understanding", the only attempt to understand here is one that is trying to prevent people like him from existing in the first place.