Inside fight against rise of incels as DOZENS of women-haters are monitored under terror programme for first time
DOZENS of sick women haters were flagged to the government's anti-terror scheme Prevent last year, according to shocking new stats.
Between April 2021 and March 2022, 77 men were identified as "incels" at risk of becoming terrorists because of their unhinged sexist views.
Today is the first time figures on the number of incels referred to Prevent have been released.
Previously, there was no category for woman haters on the government-led safeguarding programme, despite calls from MPs for its scope to expand beyond Islamic extremism.
Incel refers to "involuntary celibates", with the movement labelled a hate group as many followers believe they are owed sex by women.
Incels believe they have no possibility of finding a partner to get sex, love, validation or acceptance from.
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In turn, this makes some Incels want to strike out at the world because they have been rejected by women, while others blame attractive men for their perceived problems.
The Prevent figures come just one week after a shooter roamed the streets in Plymouth with a shotgun before killing five people in a eight-minute rampage.
Three-year-old Sophie Martyn, her father, Lee, 43, Stephen Washington, 59, and Kate Shepherd, 66, all died in the horror.
Shooter Jake Davison, 22, also killed his 51-year-old mother Maxine before turning the gun on himself.
After Davison's death, it was suggested the crane operator had a grim obsession with "incel" culture.
The origins of the incel movement
IN the mid-1990s, long before the arrival of dating apps, Facebook, or even MySpace, a lonely young woman named Alana had a simple idea.
Alana felt sad about not being able to find love and wanted to set up a supportive online community where people in a similar situation could support each other.
The community she called ‘invcels’ (for involuntary celibates) started out as a welcoming, mixed-gender space.
But years later, after Alana herself had entered a relationship and drifted away from it altogether, it would slowly begin to morph into something much darker.
Over 15 years later, in a bookshop in Toronto, Alana was browsing a magazine in a bookshop when an article about a massacre by an ‘incel’ in California caught her eye.
Elliot Rodger had murdered 6 people and injured 14 in a rampage in Santa Barbara after promising to take revenge on what he described as “the ultimate evil... the human female”.
And with a lurch of horror, she realised what the simple community she had started had become.
“Start envisioning a world where WOMEN FEAR YOU”, Rodger had written on a prominent incel website.
With the advent of easier internet access, social media platforms and algorithms, what had started as a simple, supportive community had transformed into a woman-hating, extremist ideology.
Incel-related violence has been linked to at least 53 deaths in recent years, statistics show, and on one of the most popular incel forums, some members of the community have called for wide-scale bloodshed to help "reset" society.
In May 2014, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured 14 in a stabbing and shooting spree in Isla Vista, California before turning the gun on himself.
The son of a Hollywood filmmaker, Rodger posted a "retribution" video to YouTube and emailed a manifesto to more than two dozen people he knew before carrying out the massacre, calling for a "war on women."
The most infamous mass shooting inspired by Rodger's actions was carried out by Alek Minassian, 25, who killed 10 people when he plowed through pedestrians in a rented van in Toronto, Canada in April 2018.
In a disturbing Facebook post, before the massacre, Minassian said an “Incel Rebellion has begun” while also praising Rodger as a “Supreme Gentlemen.”
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The incel community tends to be self-reinforcing and self-radicalizing, with members believing that their looks or personal traits have condemned them to a lifetime of loneliness.
Incels have also developed elaborate and deeply misogynistic theories to blame others for their plight, centered on the idea that women are stupid, shallow-minded, and intrinsically cruel.
They sometimes call women "sluts" or "whores" but most commonly refer to them as "femoids," "foids" or even "female humanoid organisms" — in other words, not quite human.
This radical ideology is often referred to as ";black pill" thinking.
Of the incels referred to Prevent in the last year, three were aged below 15.
The majority, 30, were aged between 21 - 30 years old, while only one incel fell into the 51 - 60 year old bracket.
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Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: "Incel ideology is incredibly dangerous and it is appalling for women and girls that it is taking hold among young men who are being radicalised.
“After the tragic shooting in Plymouth, there should have been a clear plan from the Home Office on how to address this problem. We need serious leadership to tackle extremism and keep young people safe from radicalisation, especially online."