Mass Shooting in the UK Spotlights the Danger of Incel ‘Terrorism’

On  Aug. 12, Jake Davison, 22, broke into his mother’s home in Plymouth, England, and shot her to death. He went on to roam his local streets and claimed a further four lives, before turning the shotgun he had used on himself.

This act of mass murder in a quiet suburban neighborhood has shocked the UK to the core.

It is over 10 years since Derrick Bird committed another such atrocity using a firearm, and unlike the U.S. the UK is not used to incidents of this kind.

A police investigation found that firearms licensing officers recently returned to Davison the shotgun he used in the killings, after it was previously confiscated over allegations of assault committed by him.

Editor’s Note: According to Davison’s profile on Facebook, he was born in Phoenix, Az., reports Newsweek.

The Independent  Office of Police Conduct is looking into these circumstances to determine if any gross errors of judgement or negligence were made by officers in returning the weapon, or if police policy and procedures were flawed or outdated.

The case has  brought into sharp focus the licensing and certification of guns in the UK, and whether the country’s gun laws need to change.

But of just as great a significance and importance is the online social media profile and postings made by Davison in the weeks prior to his actions.

It has emerged that he had been accessing, and was influenced by, the Internet subculture know as “incel” or involuntary celibates.

Incels are people, usually young men, who are involuntarily celibate because they are unable to form sexual relationships. They profess hatred towards women whom they blame for their celibacy, and they use the Internet to incite hatred and violence against women.

Incels have been linked to at least six mass shootings in the U.S. in recent years.

An article published in the Sunday (London) Times last week,  reported that Davison had posted on line that he was “ a fat ugly virgin” who had been “defeated by life.”

In his last post he called himself a “Terminator.”

According to media reports, his five victims included two women and a three-year-old girl.

There are calls now for the UK government to formally proscribe the proponents of incel culture as terrorists, reflecting concerns about a subculture of young men who actively pursue retribution against women. While there is no evidence that incel activities incite violence for political gain, their actions certainly intimidate and radicalize young men in pursuit of an ideological cause.

The Times report goes on to cite Laura Bates, the author of “Men Who Hate Women,” and an undercover researcher who had infiltrated the incel movement in the UK.

She describes the subculture as an “extremist group advocating for women to be massacred,” but adds that “at every level we don’t treat this in the way that we would any comparable form of extremism and hatred.”

Indeed the not for profit organization, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, has recorded over half a million clicks per month on  three websites devoted to the involuntary celibate subculture in the UK, and over 4.5 million clicks worldwide.

There will be a lot more sites operating to which devotees will have access.

In the UK at least, not a lot is known by the general public about incels and how to recognize the signs within families and communities and the dangers posed by them.

They are online misogynists looking to groom and radicalize young men into their way of thinking about women. Laura Bates believes that boys as young as 14 are being exposed to the ideology.

There is a need for legislation to allow police greater powers to investigate social media platforms and providers, within which they have been able to operate freely.

If  anything, the shocking events in Plymouth should now be a call to action.

A review of incel activity by government agencies in the UK should determine the full extent of the threats they pose and whether anti-terrorism legislation in the UK can be used to tackle the problem.

In the U.S.,  there have been infrequent yet deadly attacks by misogynist men subscribing to incel ideology.

In  May 2014 a  22-year-old California man, Elliot Rodger,  killed six people in a stabbing and shooting spree in Isla Vista, Calif.  In an online statement before he subsequently killed himself, Rodger spoke of his intense frustrations over his continuing virginity, and his need for retribution against women.

His acts were seized upon by the incel subculture who labelled him a hero to their cause.

More recently, in 2018, a Canadian man, Alek Minassian, using a van in Toronto, attacked and killed 10 people and injured 16.  He had targeted women and had aligned himself to the incel movement and the actions of Elliot Rodger.

His actions were formally recognized as an act of terrorism by the Canadian Government.

Indeed as many as 50 homicides in the U.S. and Canada have been attributed to the growth in the incel movement and a debate is ongoing about how to classify these crimes.

Most recently in July 2021 Tres Genco, an Ohio man who is a self-identified incel,  was federally indicted with plotting the mass shooting of women and for illegally possessing a machine gun.

There are plenty of precedents for, and extreme examples of, homicidal violence against women that may have led Keith Davison to committing his crimes in Plymouth last week.

One incident like this is always one too many, and all members of law enforcement should take stock. Policing needs to keep up with the changing landscape of digital media and its manipulation for criminal activity.

As Callum Hood, the head of research at the Centre for Countering Digital Hate told the Sunday Times:

There’s no question in our minds that (incels are) a radicalizing community. This should be a wake-up call that online misogyny is not an online-only problem. There is a real danger this could happen again, and it needs to be taken seriously.

One thing for sure: Davison and other incels like him who have committed murder of women are not the heroes or gentlemen that incel websites boast about. The spread of their bile needs to be stopped.

Gareth Bryon

One way of getting to boys early is the inclusion of the dangers from incel hatred being included in the educational programme that the UK government is supporting, in the roll out of its new Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy.

The new chief police officer role that was announced by the Home Secretary to oversee the co-ordination of all strands of their violence against women and girls policy must now surely include work to eradicate incel hatred before it has chance to grow.

Gareth Bryon is a former Detective Chief Superintendent who worked as a senior officer in the South Wales Police and the British Transport Police, where he led major crime investigation and forensic science services for over 30 years.