September 23, 2022 Editor

The online incel movement is getting more violent and extreme, report says

The Center for Countering Digital Hate analyzed more than 1 million posts showing a rise in advocacy of rape, mass killings

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Updated September 23, 2022

image above: CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANITY’S “COME TO JESUS” MOMENT IN WAKE OF ELLIOT RODGER SHOOTINGS

WN: My wife Esther and I have encountered some of this kind of vile hatred of women from a few participants (who invariably quit our Groups when countered) in a 15-week Home Improvement course we teach under Mennonite Central Committee British Columbia’s End Abuse Program in Abbotsford BC. Our eleventh Home Improvement Group begins September 26, 2022.

The spiritual opposite of love is fear. And fear breeds hatred. These men highlighted below are deeply flawed and profoundly fearful individuals. The only antidote is love:

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (I John 4:18)

The section leading to the above quote reads:

7Beloved, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

9This is how God’s love was revealed among us: God sent His one and only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. 10And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is perfected in us [ideally–but rarely so; then again we should keep on striving!]. 13By this we know that we remain in Him, and He in us: He has given us of His Spirit. 14And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world.

15If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16And we have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love; whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him. 17In this way, love has been perfected among us [ideally–but rarely so; then again we should keep on striving!], so that we may have confidence on the day of judgment; for in this world we are[/ought to be] just like Him [but millions of white American–and around the world–Evangelical “Christian(s)” (Nationalists) are instead anti-Christ].

Finally (John 13):

34A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also must love one another. 35By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.”–Jesus

Hence this, seen on my Front Page:

Personal Mantra

The Gospels indicate that the test case for love of God is love of neighbour.

The test case for love of neighbour is love of enemy.

Therefore, to the extent we love neighbour and enemy, to that extent we love God. And to the extent we fail to love neighbour and enemy, we fail to love God.

“Love” (agapao) is a New Testament action verb that constantly reaches out to embrace as friends, draw a circle of inclusion around, neighbour and enemy (agape is the noun form, almost invariably referencing God’s unconditional love in the New Testament).

Therefore, the ultimate theological bottom line is:

GOD IS ALL-INCLUSIVE LOVE. PERIOD.

This then is a Great Divide in Christian theology, on the one and the other hands:

  • Those who affirm that God is All-Inclusive Love. Period!
  • Those who assert God to be Anything Less!

This is a pointer to that kind of love:

(…) we can begin to understand what the love of God means for us, that God loves us in the same way, that the love of God for us has this altruism, this other-centredness. God loves us so that we can be fulfilled. Not to fulfil God in an egotistical way but in order for us to become fully alive – a phrase that Jesus uses, ‘I have come so that you may have life and life in all its fullness.’ John Main’s theology of meditation is rooted in that statement, that meditation is a simple spiritual practice that opens us to this most profound mystery of what it is to be human, and this is something that we learn and experience, not just through reading or in courses but in and through our daily experience. (Attention and Love 2 by Laurence Freeman OSB1)

excerpts:

The most prominent forum for men who consider themselves involuntarily celibate or “incels” has become significantly more radicalized over the past year and a half and is seeking to normalize child rape, a new report says.

The report, by the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s new Quant Lab, is the culmination of an investigation that analyzed more than 1 million posts on the site. It found a marked spike in conversations about mass murder and growing approval of sexually assaulting prepubescent girls.

The report also says that platforms including YouTube and Google, as well as internet infrastructure companies like Cloudflare are facilitating the growth of the forum, which the report said is visited by 2.6 million people every month. “These businesses should make a principled decision to withdraw their services from sites causing such significant harm,” the report says.

“This is a novel, new violent extremist movement born in the internet age, which defies the usual characteristics of violent extremist movements that law enforcement and the intelligence community are usually used to,” said Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of CCDH, a US-based nonprofit. “Our study shows that it is organized, has a cogent ideology and has clearly concluded that raping women, killing women, and raping children is a clear part of the practice of their ideology.”

Incels blame women for their failings in life. The term originated decades ago, and while the first incel forum was founded by a woman in the mid 1990s, incel communities have since become almost exclusively male. Incel ideology has been linked to dozens of murders and assaults over the past decade, the most prominent one involving Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old self-described incel who murdered six people in a stabbing and shooting rampage in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 2014. Before killing himself, he posted a long manifesto and YouTube videos promoting incel ideology.

In March, the U.S. Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center released a report warning that anti-woman violence was a growing terrorism threat.

According to the CCDH analysis, members of the forum post about rape every 29 minutes, and more than 89 percent of posters support rape and say it’s acceptable. The CCDH analysis also found that posters on the forum are seeking to normalize child rape. More than a quarter of members of the forum have posted pedophilia keywords, the analysis found, and more than half of the members of the forum support pedophilia.

This forum is a violent ideological manifesto, but for the 21st century. Instead of being a book, it’s essentially a wiki that is continuously being evolved by the readers themselves. Left alone, this community has been radicalized further and their ideology is becoming more dangerous by the day.Imran Ahmed

The forum also changed its rules this year to accommodate what appears to be a trend toward normalizing rape of younger victims, according to the report. The forum previously implored users not to “sexualize minors in any way, shape or form,” but in March changed that language to “do not sexualize prepubescent minors in any way, shape, or form.”

The report also cited content that reflected the trend toward pedophilia, noting that a majority of commenters voiced support for a post that read, “As an incel, there is literally no reason to be against pedophilia.” Another thread started by a regular user who had posted more than 7,000 times to the forum contained an image of a 12-year-old child with the comment “who in their right mind would prefer a 22 year old [woman] to this?”

“Analysis of their discourse shows this core group poses a clear and present danger to women, other young men, and reveals an emerging threat to our children,” the report says.

CCDH said its analysis also had found a rising interest in mass murder on the site. Posts mentioning incel mass murders increased 59 percent between 2021 and 2022, the study said, and praise was common for Elliot Rodger. The word “kill” was mentioned 1,181 times on the forum in just one month, equivalent to once every 37 minutes. “Shoot” and “murder” are also popular words on the forum.

“We are in no doubt after conducting this study that this community of angry, belligerent and unapologetic men are dangerous to each other, with malignant social dynamics whereby they encourage each other to worse and worse extremes,” the report said. “Unchecked, incel communities have the potential to radicalize further.”

The CCDH urged government regulators also to find ways to combat incel ideology and restrict the site. “This should not be left to the goodwill of Big Tech, who profit from the creation and spread of this content and are not properly incentivized or required to be proactively transparent on the key metrics or to invest in the desired safety outcomes,” the report says.

Please click on: The online incel movement is getting more violent and extreme

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  1. Director of The World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM), founded in 1991 to foster the teachings of Benedictine monk and priest John Main. Main taught a way of Christian meditation which was based on the parallels he saw between the spiritual practice taught by Desert Father John Cassian and the meditative practice he had been taught in Kuala Lumpur.

    The current director of the WCCM is Laurence Freeman OSB, a student of John Main and a Benedictine monk of the Olivetan Congregation. The World Community, which boasts of over 110 000 members in over 100 countries has its International Centre in Bonnevaux France. []

Editor

Wayne Northey was Director of Man-to-Man/Woman-to-Woman – Restorative Christian Ministries (M2/W2) in British Columbia, Canada from 1998 to 2014, when he retired. He has been active in the criminal justice arena and a keen promoter of Restorative Justice since 1974. He has published widely on peacemaking and justice themes. You will find more about that on this website: a work in progress.

Always appreciate constructive feedback! Thanks.