The 'Rebellion' Declared on Facebook
Minutes before a rented van tore through a Toronto sidewalk in April 2018, killing 10 people that day and one more later, its driver posted a Facebook message hailing an “incel rebellion.” The case became a landmark example of online misogynist radicalization turning lethal.
On the afternoon of April 23, 2018, Alek Minassian drove a rented van onto a busy stretch of Yonge Street in north Toronto and steered into pedestrians, killing 10 people that day and injuring more than a dozen, according to the public record of the case. An 11th victim died in October 2021 of injuries sustained in the attack, bringing the death toll to 11; nine of those killed were women.
Shortly before the attack, a message was posted to a Facebook profile belonging to Minassian. Facebook confirmed the post’s authenticity to reporters. Written in the form of a mock military report, it read: “Private (Recruit) Minassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt 4chan please. C23249161. The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!” The text was reproduced by Gizmodo and other outlets after the attack.
The language of a subculture
The post drew on the vocabulary of the “incel” movement, short for “involuntary celibate” — an online subculture of men who blame women for their lack of sexual and romantic relationships. Within that world, “Chad” and “Stacy” are derisive labels for sexually successful men and women. “Elliot Rodger” referred to the man who killed six people near Isla Vista, California, in 2014 after posting a manifesto and video railing against women who had rejected him, and whom parts of the incel forums came to venerate.
Researchers and officials described the Toronto attack as an early, unmistakable case of that ideology producing mass violence. In the days afterward, experts told Al Jazeera that misogyny was central to the killings; Ryan Lenz of the Southern Poverty Law Center warned against dismissing the violence “as basically just the act of some delusional individual,” saying doing so would “undercut just how problematic and dangerous the rise of this incel movement has become.”
A court’s finding
At trial, Minassian did not dispute that he had carried out the attack but argued he was not criminally responsible. On March 3, 2021, Justice Anne Molloy of the Ontario Superior Court rejected that defense and convicted him on 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder. His attack “was an act of a reasoning mind,” she said in her ruling, “notwithstanding its horrific nature, and notwithstanding that he has no remorse for it and no empathy for his victims,” according to Al Jazeera.
In June 2022 Minassian was sentenced to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for 25 years, a term Molloy stressed was a life sentence, CBC News reported.
A message read as a signal
The brevity of the Facebook post — a few lines of subcultural slang posted to a public profile — belied its function. To investigators and researchers it was a declaration of allegiance to an online movement, written for an audience that would recognize its references. Minassian later told police he had hoped to inspire others to follow him — “I was thinking that I would inspire future masses to join me,” he said in a police interview cited by Rolling Stone.
The Toronto case is now widely cited by researchers of online extremism as a marker of the moment misogynist internet culture was shown to have driven a mass-casualty attack in a Western city — and of how a short message on a mainstream platform can carry a violent movement’s entire code.