"It's not terrorism": Plymouth *title edited by MNHQ at OP's request*

[EmbarrassingAdmissions]

As soon as everyone saw the "It's not terrorism" reassurance last night wrt to the wretched events in Portsmouth - how many of us knew that the media would report a story about a young man with history of anger about lacking sexual experience with women?

[X] 23, a bodybuilder who appears obsessed with not being attractive to women and being without a girlfriend, has been named by people in the Devon naval city as the gunman with a five-year-old girl and several relatives feared to be among his victims.

I won't use X's name.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9890209/I-Terminator-Rambling-videos-fat-ugly-virgin-23-went-rampage-Plymouth.html

archive of article: archive.is/CkHNb

I'd like to think people here are aware that using language with some precision is important.

This is not terrorism. Terrorism has a very specific meaning. It involves a group or individual with political aims, but instead of engaging in a standard war-type conflict, they use violence and fear against the civilian population to create political pressure on the government toward achiving their political goals.

This meaning, since 9/11, has been eroded, initially mainly by the American government, in order to justify their actions against people they want to label as terrorists, as the international laws of war do not apply to terrorists in the same way they do to soldiers.

Since then it seems all kinds of governments and the media have decided to use the word for it's emotional power to manipulate, rather than to actually communicate in an accurate way.

A mass shooting does not = terrorism, even if it's an attempt at some sort of eradication of certain people, or a protest, or whatever.

Ooh your threads got to page 3, my thread at 9am didn't make it past page 1 before it got the "Mumsnet multimedia message".

@Nachthex

The Daily Mail article I read struck me as really odd. This man was a supporter of Donald Trump, posted about American right wing politics and then killed those people in a way I, for one, would see as American-influenced. So I thought this incident had taken place in Plymouth, Massachusetts. But no.

Not for the first time have I noticed this American influence on the young. Actually, no it isn't an influence. It's a conflation of two very different societies where the bad aspects of one society seem to be dominating others.

Couldn't agree more. Extremely worrying.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions

If I understand Norris' thread, incel is part of the portfolio within a network of hate and violence.

It's also important to highlight, as I've been trying to do here, that the incel community overlaps with the white supremacist community. It is very hard to disentangle both communities. The overlaps are numeorus.

Incel violence is white supremacist violence.

And both are deeply endemic of our society, and yet as long as they keep on being dismissed as 'isolated' 'domestic' issues, the threat will continue to grow until it swallows us all.

twitter.com/MariaWNorris/status/1426122596366667776

We seem to be so intent on shoe-horning terrorism into predefined categories that our social and governing structures are unwilling to address the threat in plain sight.

It's not about "shoe-horning" it. It has a very specific meaning and always has.

Saying it's not terrorism doesn't mean that it isn't bad. It's just not terrorism.

@IheartJKR

Eleanor Penny was fantastic in BBC news right now.

She's getting some positive comments about it on Twitter - inevitably, take a guess as to the sex of those: questioning what qualifies her to comment on this; complaining How did you manage to turn every answer into a preachy feminist speech? Sad that you had to take advantage of this situation to get your own personal message across.

And this seems to be despite her argument, iirc, about the need to help young people find a route to dignity without violence.
twitter.com/eleanorkpenny/status/1426135234798669824

@EsmaCannonball

And still misogyny isn't considered a hate crime. As soon as I saw this I thought it would either be related to domestic violence or the incel movement. I don't agree with those who want to redefine any mass killing as terrorism, but I would definitely include the incel movement as terrorism because it has a philosophy and an aim. As relevant to this particular board, I don't think there's much of a leap from the incel movement to the cotton-ceiling branch of a certain other movement.

They both have the same motivations, it's true. Absolute sense of entitlement, lack of respect for other people's boundaries and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, hatred of women.

Singling out any group for hatred, violence and discrimination is not a-okay, going by most of the laws of our country. Seems it's only women who are considered fair game.

Judging by those who followed the Santa Barbara shooter, who is known to have inspired at least one copycat scenario (in Canada), this is an organised movement with a deeply unpleasant underground presence on the internet (and some of it's not that far underground, either, going by one particular forum which banned GC feminism but allowed this kind of shit to stand).

It needs tackling or sadly this won't be the last such event, just as it wasn't the first.

@SunShinesBrightly

Please do not take it upon yourself to speak for "every woman in the world". I walk past teenage boys, and men, every day of my life and don't ever have to take a moment to wonder if I would be safe! Typical of the hyperbole on these threads.

This.

For those of us who have been subjected to sexual violence by men in the street, what is the point of accusing us of hyperbole? I'm glad neither of you feel that fear but coming onto a feminist thread about a man who has just killed a group of people and telling us that our fear of men is hyperbole? Really? All you're doing is minimising and dismissing a very natural trauma response that thousands of women have to deal with every day. Weird and incredibly lacking in empathy.

I really think there should be a campaign to recognise acts like this as terrorism and for people suspected of following this ideology to be included in the prevent programme.

I work with young people, many of them of Muslim origin. Staff are forever being given training on how to look out for religious radicalisation and report to the police. To be fair we are told to look out for right wing extremism too. However, I KNOW there are some very very misogynistic ideas held by some of the young men from all backgrounds which we somehow regard as the distasteful end of a spectrum of acceptability.

Why? Violent attacks against women are a far greater threat to society than Muslim or right wing extremist attacks. They happen every single day of the year.

Ah, have the NAMALTs arrived already? That didn't take long, did it?

There's no evidence that the shootings were motivated by incel ideology. The fact that two of his victims were men makes it unlikely he was specifically targetting women and girls.

These are real events with real victims and people should stop and wait for the facts to come out instead of pushing a predetermined narrative.

pushing a predetermined narrative

For me, it's a discussion about stereotyped narratives that are predictable in MSM coverage: they rarely differ.

Very little will change in the absence of some exploration that determines whether some common and unpleasant realities have to be addressed. E.g., violence as a public health problem.

There is no evidence on a lot of things in this thread, and given the DM published completely wrong "facts" during the night and the police are asking people not to speculate it's probably best that speculation does not happen.

The daily mail are publishing things that the police have not said in any statement so far.

This is in such bad taste - men and women are dead ffs, yes his YouTube sounds a mess - but he didn't target women

I'd like to think people here are aware that using language with some precision is important
This is not terrorism. Terrorism has a very specific meaning. It involves a group or individual with political aims

Firstly, we don’t actually yet know what the provocation for this particular act was, the police are currently saying it is ‘domestically related’ with ‘no motive’ (from Devon and Cornwall PCC Shaun Sawyer quoted in the Telegraph). So speculation about this actual case will probably result in this thread being deleted like the other one earlier. So, with that in mind moving on to simply discussing whether Incel inspired mass shootings are Terrorism or not, and the Incel movement most definitely being an ideology, this is the U.K. Terrorism Act:

(1) In this Act "terrorism" means the use or threat of action where:
(a) the action falls within subsection (2),
(b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public and
(c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause
(2) Action falls within this subsection if it:
(a) involves serious violence against a person,
(b) involves serious damage to property,
(c) endangers a person's life, other than that of the person committing the action,
(d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public or
(e) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.[78]

Seems clear that Incel inspired mass killings would definitely fall under the U.K. definition of Terrorism.

I'm glad neither of you feel that fear but coming onto a feminist thread about a man who has just killed a group of people and telling us that our fear of men is hyperbole? Really? I think the hyperbole is about saying every woman feels this. Some women, many women but you can't say all women because it isn't true.

Agreeing with other PPs that my first reaction was ‘but this happens in the US, not in the UK’. I also completely assumed it was an ex partner. From what PPs are suggesting, this isn’t the case. It’s absolutely horrifying and heart breaking.

Whilst the deliberate import of American culture war into UK politics and society is extremely worrying. I see what’s happening with the influence of endless American IG videos and YouTube channels on my DC.

Very little will change in the absence of some exploration that determines whether some common and unpleasant realities have to be addressed. E.g., violence as a public health problem.

Yes, but it's not really possible to have that exploration when people have immeadiately jumped on a particular narrative ("incel terrorism") purely based on the Daily Mail having trawled the perpetrator's YouTube feed for "juicy" headlines.

The child killed was a little girl. So very sad.

This seems a good rundown of what happened, updated when new details come in.

news.sky.com/story/plymouth-shooting-live-updates-vigil-to-be-held-for-victims-as-area-to-be-cordoned-off-for-quite-some-time-12380093?utm_source=upday&utm_medium=referral

@Sobeyondthehills

To me, when they use the term "It's not terrorism" They mean he is white

I think the rules are;

Black = gang related
Brown = terrorist
White = mental breakdown

If women are targeted thats never the issue, nothing to see here.

Whilst we’re being told by some PP’s that terrorism has to have a political aim… There is no universally accepted definition of terrorism. It remains the subject of continuing debate in international bodies

Many debating the definition accept that those perpetrating terrorism / terrorist acts do so to advance a religious or ideological, as well as political, cause. Seems that far right/incel acts of violence fall well within that definition.

@Stevie6

This is in such bad taste - men and women are dead ffs, yes his YouTube sounds a mess - but he didn't target women

No, Incels tend to target other men who they perceive to be more successful with the opposite sex than they are (which would likely be most of them). An Incel group online was known as PUAHate; PUA being pick up artist. They hate those men, albeit less than they hate the women they perceive have rejected them and to whose bodies they seemingly feel entitled. It's like a reversal of the dog-in-the-manger attitude that other men have something to which they feel they have an automatic right (ie sex with the women they want, irrespective of those women's consent), and if the incels can't have it, then other men shouldn't, either. The Santa Barbara shooter's lengthy screeds on this precise topic were illuminating.

So yes, these murders of men are indeed driven by a misogynistic agenda.

I actually think it should all be classified as "male violence" rather than trying to get something like this discussed as terrorism.

Personally think terrorism pertains to more organised attacks.

"Radicalised lone male violence" would cover this and similar attacks in the name of other ideologies/religions/cults. If we just named things as male violence consistently it would put a clearer light on the issue. I think.

I fully sympathise with wanting to call this terrorism though and not liking the split by the race of the perpetrator as to what it gets called.

Men's power over women is absolutely political. Lesson from the second wave there.

@WomaninBoots

I actually think it should all be classified as "male violence" rather than trying to get something like this discussed as terrorism.

Personally think terrorism pertains to more organised attacks.

"Radicalised lone male violence" would cover this and similar attacks in the name of other ideologies/religions/cults. If we just named things as male violence consistently it would put a clearer light on the issue. I think.

I fully sympathise with wanting to call this terrorism though and not liking the split by the race of the perpetrator as to what it gets called.

I agree with this. It is such an overwhelmingly male thing to do. It should be made loud and clear every time: male violence.

This man was legally allowed to own a firearm as well, I suppose it's easy to say with hindsight but he clearly was unstable.

My heart goes out to the victims and their families. Such an awful, tragic incident.