(Caamib's translation of an article about an interview between him and German news magazine Der Spiegel in 2014)

Male, single, life-threatening

The man who killed six people in Santa Barbara in May, was a member of an obscure community: So-called Incels live involuntarily as single, and some develop a hatred of women, which can be fatal. Who are these men?

Written by Takis Strangler

Marijan says there are people in his community who hate the summer. In summer they have no choice but to see more of the women, their skin, their bare knees, tight clothes and their breasts. Marijan says he does not look at women, and he was trying to avoid places where he has to see naked female skin. He says: "If you're hungry but cannot eat, you're not going into a street fully loaded with cakes."

Marijan, 26, from Zagreb wishes a girlfried, and because he’s unable to find one, he experiences his life as a torment. He is lonely, but in his loneliness he is not alone. His community meets on the Internet.

He belongs to a group of people who answer to the moniker "Incel", which is the abbreviation for the English term "involuntary celibacy”. Marijan frequents forums in which an own culture of solitude has developed.

People who gather there are almost always men, a few hundred in total. How many there are exactly, can be difficult to estimate, there are English, German, Dutch, Australians and especially Americans.

One of them wrote in the past year on an internet forum: "One day the Incels will realize their true strength and number and overthrow the oppressive feminist system. Imagine a world in which the WOMEN FEAR YOU. "

The author of these lines was student Rodger Elliot. On 23 May this year, Rodger (22), from Santa Barbara, California, recorded a video from himself. He put the camera on the dashboard of his BMW and sat behind the wheel.

He said: "This is my last video. Tomorrow is the day of retribution. The day on which humanity will experience my retaliation. Which you all will experience. In the past eight years of my life, since I reached puberty, I was forced to endure loneliness, an existence full of rejection and unrequited desire. All just because women never felt attracted to me. In the last years I rotted in solitude. "

Now and then Rodger laughed in the camera, a handsome young man with black hair and white teeth. Through the window of his car palm trees were visible.

A short time later, he killed three fellow students in his apartment. Forensic scientists examine which weapon he used. The wounds of the corpses are not clear. The police secured fingerprints on two machetes, a knife and a hammer.

When the men were dead, Rodger took his Sig Sauer P226, his Glock 34 and two semi-automatic pistols, and went out in the neighboring community of Isla Vista. He knocked at the house of a sorority. Nobody answered him.

A few steps further on he shot two students. He went into a snackbar and shot and killed a customer. Then he climbed into his car, drove through the town and shot at passers-by, injuring 13 people.

He rammed his BMW into a cyclist, slammed into a parked car and killed himself with a shot in the head. Rodger left a few videos and a 137-page manifesto. In it are phrases like: "Women are like a plague. They are like animals, completely controlled by their animalistic instincts, and corrupt feelings and impulses. "

Many men who became lone gunmen have, as Rodger had, a sick relation with women in general. Eric Harris, one of the boys involved in the 1999 at Columbine High School shooting in the United States, killing 13 people and killed himself, wrote in his diary: "Maybe I just need to have sex. Perhaps that would change this shit. "

And his accomplice Dylan Klebold wrote: "I do not know what I do wrong with people (especially women) - it is, as if they hate me and scare me. "

During a shooting rampage in Winnenden in 2009 Tim Kretschmer killed eight female students, three female teachers and a male student in his former school.

In the same year the American George Sodini shot three women and wounded nine more, before taking his own life in a gymstudio. Previously, he had written in his blog:

"Women simply don’t like me. There are 30 million desirable women in the United States (is my estimate) - and I find none "!

These gunman leave questions:

Why people had to die? Exists there a connection between the murders and the loneliness of the perpetrators? What has this incel community from the Internet to do with the murders?

Rodger can answer no longer, and even if he could, he could hardly give any clear answers. But there are people who understand a few of his thoughts. Because they share his anger at women and his loneliness. One of them is Marijan (not his real name). You can reach him on his blog, thatincelblogger.wordpress.com.

After a few emails he agreed to meet, in Zagreb, Croatia, his hometown.

Before a pizzeria near the Cathedral a handsome young man, tall, with jet black hair and a three-day beard is waiting, he wears a white, loose T-shirt and cropped trousers.

While shaking hands he does not look one in the eyes. As he sits at a table, in the back, in a quiet corner of the restaurant, he says: "I'm going to look bad in the article, but what have I got to lose? "

He says he was angry after Rodgers rampage. The whole world again only talked about tougher gun laws. But no one thought about other reasons that drove Rodgers to his rampage. No one had thought about incel.

Marijan talks much and long. He doesn’t allow a lot of questions. It is less a conversation but rather a series of lectures, which he conducts with great precision.

Sentence after sentence, lecture to lecture, he leads the listener deeper into his world, deeper into the darkness in which there seems to be no happiness, only immeasurable hatred.

Excerpts from lecture one, subject: Women.

Women are simply designed robots with the desire to procreate. Young women in past generations always had help from their grandmother. She helped with finding a man. She said: This is a good type, he will take care of you. These grandmothers were replaced with the magazine Cosmopolitan. Today women want to marry up. They want improve their station. I would not say that we Incels hate women. But if you were rejected 50 times, then you develop negative feelings, which is normal.

Excerpts from lecture two, Topic: seduction game.

Women can now provide for themselves, so their preferences have changed from breadwinners to seducers. A minority of men has sex with the majority of women. The successful men are the Bad Boys. If you want to have a woman today, you need to become a Bad Boy and lose your ethics.

Excerpts from lecture three, theme: a better world.

I want a society in which a group of men cooperates in total trust. Each man gets a woman. The women are fairly distributed. People are monogamous and marry as a virgin. If a man wants sexual diversity, he goes to a prostitute. Feminists would be made prostitutes in this society. When a man tries to seduce multiple woman, he is killed instantly.

Marijan and other Incels meet on various forums on the Internet. the forum, that Elliot Rodger used, is now closed. Another is a relatively moderate forum called love-shy.com. The members speak there about topics such as pick-up lines, plastic surgery and other ways to escape their despair.

The users of the forum had opened a discussion about Elliot Rodger. On the first page a moderator writes that he condemns the deed and that Rodger did not reflect the philosophies of loveshy.com. The moderator announces that all posts glorifying the deed will be deleted.

One user writes on one of the later pages: "I think about Elliot Rodger ... why didn’t he just rape a slut at gunpoint? "

Another user wrote: "I was always taught to respect women and not to be sexually aggressive. That was a bucket full of shit. All what they really want is a muscle man who fucks them in the ass instead of fucking a real person with feelings”

A user writes on one of the last pages about Rodger: "He is a martyr, in the real sense of the word, one must give him that. "

On the forum Marijan calls himself "Dante Alighieri”, as the medieval poet. Dante started his poem “the Divine Comedy” with the words: "Halfway through the path of human life I found /myself in a devious dark forest/ Because I strayed from the right path."

On the morning after the first meeting Marijan wears the same clothes as on the day before. He says he did not sleep well, because the conversation had him stirred. In the café he ordered a chocolate cake and tells his life story.

Marijan grew up in a middle class family, he has a brother, and both parents were employeed. In school he had many years of little contact with girls. As he started to get interested in girls, they were alien to him. He was afraid of them. "My brain has not developed normally, " Marijan says. He was "love-shy". The American psychology professor Brian Gilmartin invented this term in 1987. The men who suffer from this condition complain about their complete inability to enter into a romantic relationship.

Some men report panic attacks, when they are alone with women, some break out in sweat, others can hardly move anymore when they think of a date, to which they look forward to. Marijan developed a morbid fear of women mingled with a steadily growing demand for a relationship with a woman.

He says: "My standards are very low, as long as the woman is not overweight or is unhygienic. And I have trouble with bad teeth. "

At 19, he met a girl through an SMS Chat. She was 16 and said to Marijan, that she wanted to sleep with him. She showed him how she likes to be kissed. The girl became Marijans girlfriend. He was happy for a moment.

Then she went on vacation over the summer to an island. Before parting, Marijan was angry because he did not want her to go, and told her that maybe they should become just friends.

The girl went anyway. Marijan sent her many SMSes and self-written poems. When she returned, she told him that she no longer liked him. Marijan could not cry for three days. Then when he finally cried, he didn’t go to the university for months and stuffed himself full with chocolate. He didn’t get over it, says Marijan. After one year he wrote on an Incel forum on the internet that he was planning on shooting himself and the girl. The owners of this forum contacted Interpol. Marijan got a visit of the Croatian police.

He testified that he no longer wanted to kill. The policemen nevertheless arrested him and charged him with the suspicion of murder threats and put him in pre-trial detention. After a month a judge released Marijan because he hadn’t threatened anyone directly. The judge said, so tells Marijan: "Maybe you’ll meet another woman just outside the court."

It was followed by two years without a kiss.

As Marijan turned 24 years old, he wrote on an Internet forum that he was a male virgin and looking for a woman, that would deflower him. A Croatian woman contacted him, visited him in Zagreb, slept with him and then said that he was pathetic , as he tells it.

In the years after he managed to bed three other women. "One of them was crazy and
a total bitch, "says Marijan. When she left him for another, he remained lying in bed for months, he says. He thought about suicide, and spent five days in a psychiatric ward.

Later he earned a degree in Medieval History at the Zagreb University. But he never wanted to work, because, as he says, he didn’t want to pay taxes that will reward sluts.

Today he says he no longer dates because he never want to feel disappointment again. He’s been alone for a year.

Most gunmen send out signals before their deeds, signals which could have been interpreted as warnings in retrospect. Allusions, threats, videos on the Internet.

Some gunman stuck a note on the school toilet wall, on which was written: "Tomorrow you're dead." Some men start wearing black clothes and leather jackets before they act. Elliot Rodger wrote his fantasies on blogs.

Marijan says: "There are a lot of broken people waiting to die. And he says:" I do not know when I will snap. " This English word "Snap" has several meanings. It can mean break, tear or explode. Marijan says: "I think Incel that can cause people to shoot or kill with a bomb. "

He smiles, it seems as if he enjoy the moment. Psychologists and psychiatrists that deal with school shootings, try to explain why men kill women, but women almost never kill men. Testosterone was one reason, the researchers say, and gender roles are also to blame, since men are more likely to resolve conflict with force and women are more likely to retreat. At the end they still lack a satisfactory explanation.

The FBI, the American Federal - police, writes in a report about shootings at schools that offenders are often focused on perceived injustices. One goes through life and picks out everything, that offends them. Every stupid comments of a classmate is remembered, each breakup with a girl finds his place in the collection of misery, until someone thinks the whole society is against you.

Many gunman also like to play videogames, where it’s the goal to shoot people’s head off. And many suffer from a narcissistic disorder.

But correlation does not equate causation, so no handy formula like this one can be derived: loneliness + computer games + narcissism = rampage. There are many lonely, narcissistic gamers who never shoot people.

In the life of a crazed gunman something happens, that the psychiatrists and psychologists cannot explain. Evil is sometimes greater than a simple explanation.

The assassin who tried in 1981 to shoot U.S. President Ronald Reagan, said when interviewed: "You know a few things about me, sweetheart, for example, that I’m obsessed with fantasy, but why don’t you understand, that fantasy in my world becomes reality? "

Another gunman from the USA heard voices that told him: "You have to kill all. You have to kill the whole world. "

According to Wikipedia: "The trigger of a rampage is a combination of an advanced psychosocial uprooting of the offender, the loss of professional integration through unemployment, demotion or transfer, increasingly experienced insults and partnership conflicts. "

After all, what Marijan tells about himself, he has few friends, no job, no partner, and he experiences his life as an insult, which becomes greater each passing dayl. Those looking for long enough, will realize that the template fits him.

The last meeting with Marijan is in the evening and takes place in a restaurant, again at a table away from the other guests. It is a warm evening, but Marijan sits down inside the restaurant, the place where no one else sits. He says that he wished that women have the right to vote taken away.

Then he says that he once tried to kill himself with sleeping pills, but one and a half days later he had woken up. His eyes light up with pleasure when he takes on the theme rampage. Then he unleashes the bad thoughts from his mind in the world. He says: "I will cause dissatisfaction. I want to make people angry. I do not think that I'm going to kill people. " After a moment of silence, he says: "I want to spread a little panic. "

He again starts talking about similar topics as on the first day, always it comes to women, and always it comes to himself, he says: "I've started to see women as the filth that they are. " A little later he says: "I do not like people."

This article attempts to explain about the Incel community and the research leads to different men, who identify as Incel. One dreams of to find a farm where Incels can live together. The farm dwellers could agree to import women from Mexico and divided them amongst themselves. One sat with radiant eyes in a small German town and told of how he overcame his fear of women by simply spending more time with women. He looked happy and said it was probably a good idea if the Incel forums were monitored by psychiatrists to ensure that the users can find professional help.

Another hopes to, finally, in his mid-twenties, to kiss a woman. A few of these men seem lost. Nobody seems dangerous. And in end it became clear that there is no Incel community. There are only a few lonely men.

Many men from the Incel community can simply find no partner and look for help on the internet. For them the forums can perhaps save them. For other men the forums offer the opportunity to cultivate their hatred in a group.

For 20 years, such people would remain in their hole, alone with their bad thoughts. Probably a man is difficult to love when he is full of hatred. While carrying these thoughts, it’s possible to want to kill everyone around you and yourself. The potential gunman becomes Incel. And not the Incel a potential gunman.

Elliot Rodger was in his mid twenties when he died, he had visited several therapists, he had been bullied at school, he had his own blog on the Internet.

Marijan is mid-twenties, he has visited several therapists, he was bullied at school, he wrote his own blog on the Internet. One was a mass murderer. The other meets with a journalist and eats chocolate cake.

Rodger left us with the question:

Why did six people have to die? There is no logical explanation. His 137-page manifesto that he wrote before he became a murderer, ends raving about the prospect of killing people. It shall be the punishment for not getting a woman who loves him. Rodger has named the work "My fucked-up world ". He writes that he will retaliate and punish everyone. The last sentence of the manuscript is as follows:

"Finally, I can show true value to the world. "And in the penultimate sentence Elliot Rodger, 22, a young man from California, who had his whole life before him writes: "And it will be beautiful."

Marijan wrote recently a new entry on his blog. He analyzed why he is lonely: "I finally understand the depths of madness and sexism in our society. All the betrayal, the whole heartless and horrible behavior of women were seen as my fault. That is hatred. "