Incels threaten when refusing to hear 'no' turns lethal
Like other so-called "incels," Scott P. Beierle's complaint about women who failed to see how wonderful he was, might have been simply funny, were it not so pathetic and, in the end, tragic.
Beierle, 40, was identified as the gunman who posed as a customer to go on a killing spree in a Tallahassee, Fla., yoga studio Friday. He shot two women to death and injured five other people before turning the gun fatally on himself.
From what's been pieced together by police and news workers, Beierle sounds like a man whose mind was a stew for hatreds.
He left a history of misogynistic and racist rants in videos, first reported by Buzzfeed, that he posted over at least the past four years. He bemoaned his inability to connect with other people -- sadly, not much surprise there -- as varied as his Army comrades who didn't want to travel around with him and women who refused to go out with him, too.
He identified with the tragically bizarre "involuntary celibates" movement, which is believed to have inspired other homicidal misogynists such as Elliot O. Rodger, who killed six people in Isla Vista, Calif., in May 2014. Rodger also expressed his disgust with women in videos online and urged other incels to fight back.
Coming within two weeks of two other hate-inspired mass killings, the Tallahassee tragedy might well make you wonder, as it made me wonder, whether the whole world is going crazy.
The yoga studio massacre occurred almost a week after another mass shooting in which a man killed eleven people in Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue while mouthing anti-Semitic slurs, according to witnesses.
Barely more than a week before that, another gunman in Kentucky killed two African-American grandparents, muttering that he left another white man unharmed because "whites don't kill whites."
Both of those tragedies came at a time when a Florida man was arrested for sending pipe bombs to a dozen prominent Democratic Party figures, including former President Barack Obama.
Even before the Tallahassee shooting many asked whether the highly polarized and emotionally charged atmosphere leading up to the midterm elections had anything to do with the hate crimes.
...continued
(c) 2018 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
