When a Mass Murderer Has a Cult Following

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

Instead, he dropped a brief 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 send was crystal clear: his alleged act of terrorism was intended as a tribute of sorts to Elliot Rodger — mass murderer and patron saint of the cyberspace's "involuntary celibates."

It's been nearly iv years since Rodger killed six (and then himself) in a rampage in Isla Vista, California — an act that he saw every bit an act of "retribution" against the women of the world, those "hateful, fell and heartless creatures" who had collectively rejected him, according to his lengthy manifesto, My Twisted World. Only the cult of "Saint Elliot" — every bit his more fervent fans like to call him — is nevertheless going stiff.

Elliot Rodgers, also known simply as ER past his admirers, has emerged as the patron saint of online misogynists. His likeness has inspired endless memes that straddle the line between lulzy irony and utter sincerity (one widely circulated moving picture depicts him as a literal saint, his confront Photoshopped into a religious painting). ER's admirers on 4chan and Reddit also celebrate "Saint Elliot Solar day" on May 23, the anniversary of his murder spree. Others write strange tribute songs to award their murderous hero. In that location 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 bureaucracy — and tend to believe that those at the peak of the heap deserve to be at that place. This can easily lead to hero worship that strikes everyone else as vaguely absurd: the semi-ironic talk from men of the alt-right virtually "God Emperor" Trump, or Milo Yiannopoulos'due south cringy habit of calling Trump "daddy." And so it shouldn't come up as a shock that incels feel the same sort of reverence toward Rodger — a guy who went out and did what most incels only dream of doing.

Now, with less than a month to get earlier this year'south Saint Elliot Day, incels are embracing Minassian as the newest addition to the sainthood. On Tuesday, a commenter on Incels.me posted a moving picture of a makeshift shrine to the suspected terrorist, consummate with a votive candle, hailing him equally "our new saint." "A warrior of incelibacy," added some other commenter, "peace be upon his soul."

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

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

In a post from 4chan now circulating every bit a screenshot, one bearding channer offered a surprisingly heartfelt tribute to "the Patron Saint of r9k," a message lath on 4chan popular with incels. "Residuum in Peace Elliot Rodger," information technology began. "Your 24-hour interval of Retribution was more than a service to order; it was a gift to men similar the states men who, despite the supposed equality of America, were left to suffer as virgins. The just painful aspect of this otherwise joyous occasion is the noesis that you'll never know the extent of the psychological harm you caused. … maybe nosotros can join each other in [the] afterlife and and then nosotros'll take an eternity to spend together discussing the putrid nature of the sluts we then despise."

The author ended with a poem:

If I should die, think only this of me

That there'due south some obscure corner of the internet

That is forever dedicated to Elliot

Rodger's fans show up in the strangest of places. In the Singles & Dating section of Yahoo! Answers, a immature man identifying himself just as Topher wonders aloud if it is somehow incorrect that he admires Rodger as much as he does.

"I'll exist 20 years old in November and ever since I was in 6th grade I've had trouble getting a girlfriend," he writes. "It seems that effectually the time we all striking puberty girls take get picky with the type of guys they'll go out with. I'm relatively attractive, I accept a perfect facial structure with lite brown pilus that I style with expensive hair products. I have the newest iPhone, I have an Apple Scout, I take a BMW, I have nice apparel and a skilful amount of coin to compliment a girls expensive tastes. Yet for some reason girls are always dating losers who are broke and care for them poorly. … I see happy couples at my college and I desire to kill them. … I want to ruin their happiness and kill them all. I know how Elliot felt and I … admire him then much. Is this a bad thing?"

But the creepiest paeans to Rodger are institute not on 4chan, not lurking in "some obscure corner of the cyberspace" but rather hiding in plain sight on YouTube, where Elliot Rodger tribute videos have become most a genre unto themselves. In one such video, Wiz Khalifa'southward sentimental "See You Again" from the Furious vii soundtrack plays over family unit photos of Rodger, clips from Rodger's ain videos — and surveillance footage of convenience-shop customers fleeing in terror every bit Rodger shot upward 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 usa that since he has establish Christ he won't himself "get around killing people for fun."

There are an assortment of original tribute songs — some jokes, some utterly sincere, and still others that could well exist either. In one, a man singing then softly he might too 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 over again. The video from 2015 had garnered 115 views and a unmarried comment: "How stoned were you?"

Rodger is inappreciably the first murderer with a cult post-obit. He's not fifty-fifty the first misogynist killer to have been proclaimed a "saint" — that honor goes to "Saint" Marc Lépine, who murdered 14 women in cold claret at Montreal's École Polytechnique in 1989. But Lépine was never embraced as a "saint" by anyone other than a small handful of extremist Men'south Rights Activists looking to offend as many feminists as possible. Rodger's fanbase, for better 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 considering he showed us and then much of himself in his videos and in his manifesto. When I first saw his videos iv years ago in the wake of his set on, he came across as a deeply troubled immature man whose manner was a mixture of awkward and big-headed. Watching his videos again today, I tin run into glimpses of the strange charisma. His awkwardness, to his fans at least, comes beyond as an highly-seasoned sort of vulnerability; his sneering arrogance, no matter how contrived it often seems in these videos, comes across as confidence.

It's hard to imagine Minassian developing a similarly devoted post-obit. And then far he seems a cipher. He left backside no videos that might humanize him to potential fans. His "manifesto" was a short, impersonal paragraph, little more than a mash-up of incel clichés.

Philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach famously argued that religion was in essence a project of our hopes and desires: "what man wishes to exist, 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