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If you want to know why young men are broken, ask them.
There is a cultural crisis emboldening the misogyny and violence of the little-known “incel” movement (an abbreviation for the self-professed “involuntary celibate” community of men) and which has now been tied to three mass murders: Elliot Rodger, Chris Harper-Mercer and, this week, the alleged Toronto killer Alek Minassian, who is accused of killing 10 and injuring 15 people in one of the most horrific acts of mass violence in Canada in years.
One after another, media outlets are seeking to understand how this could happen while raising the question of how we got here. “The Internet is enabling a community of men who want to kill women,” read the headline in The Verge. “Can the radicalization of incels be stopped?” asked the Globe and Mail. But one headline stood out, from The National Post: “What should we do about the ‘incels’? Maybe help them. Shouting about what horrible women-hating losers they are (which they may be) is not going to prevent one of them from murdering again.”
This, in particular, is the question I’m concerned with, and why I am attempting to find whatever empathy or compassion might be possible for the disconnected young men flocking to the movement and who might be at a crossroads. One young man stood out in the countless hours I spent listening to podcasts, videos and chat room conversations within the incel community which I have been following for months now: 19-year-old Jack Peterson, a socially awkward Chicagoan who after hours of interviews agreed to reveal his real identity for the first time to The Daily Beast.
To be clear, Peterson initially did not want to do any media regarding the group, particularly a profile on what the makings of an incel look like, but after considering my appeal that perhaps others might want to reach out if they could have a better understanding, he agreed.
Born “Kalerthon Demetro” in the suburbs of Chicago, Peterson (his mother’s last name) is a high school dropout who lives with his single mother and whose father left when he was two years old. Peripherally involved in the online incel community for years, Peterson’s first reaction to the...