Guyanese Online

The Van Carnage:–Misogny is not all there is to see

…. It’s Implicit — Mental Health we must Revisit..

By Yvonne Sam

The Attack is a Shame but is the perpetrator the only one to Blame? The writing was clearly on the wall. But then again it was whose call?

Like most other Canadians I was horrified on hearing about the van attack in Toronto, and sprung into action by posing my overworked question” Who!? Why?  However, while the nation and the world over join in sympathy with Toronto following the senseless loss of human lives in the recent van ramming carnage, one cannot help but remark with great concern at the familiar pattern that plays out without fail after incidents of such a nature.   

The facts stand clear and the acts even clearer, that all along the perpetrator 25 year old Alex Minassian was sending cues and cries for help, all of which went totally unnoticed and utterly disregarded. Plainly put there was a checklist of danger signs. Of course no one individual or agency would accept any degree of responsibility.   Instead a  not-so new name has been added to the blame game—“The Incel Rebellion.”

Incel stands for involuntary celibate, and is not a recognized medical condition in its own right. It is also not an organized militant group, but an ideal developed by the Incel Movement, an online community of men bonded by their inability to convince women to have sex with them.  In 2014 Elliot Rodger a student at the University of California at Santa Barbara, a self-identified incel went on a killing spree, killing six people before taking his own life. In the wake was left a protracted statement that described his frustration at his inability to find a girlfriend, his hatred of women and his resentment of people in couples, particularly interracial pairs.In 2015, 26 year old Chris Harper a community college student in Oregon killed nine people before taking his own life.

Although the killer’s special disabilities have not been revealed, his peers nevertheless report that while attending Thornlea Secondary School in Thornhill, Ontario, he was in a “special needs” class, was never heard speaking any English, seemed to constantly rub his head or handstand; was known to meow like a cat and try to bite people.  In fact one source who graduated in 2009 reports as follow: “I didn’t know if he could speak at all”.  “He would just make noises. He behaved as someone trying to act like a cat.

Another classmate in the same Grade 10 class as Minassian recalls the following,“He would also open his shirt and spit on himself in the middle of class.” He is not known to have had any friends and was basically what one may call a loner, preferring to live in his own world. One is then left to wonder as to what type of report would emerge from those who were entrusted in steering his already skewered educational path, seeing that the school was staffed and resourced to provide appropriate special education for students with special needs.  Despite occupying a human body, Minassian acted and behaved like a member of the feline specie.

Of striking note, is the fact that he attended Seneca College in Ontario from 2011-2018, and here again students reported that he had mental issues. Ironically the college campus is just a few kilometres shy of the mass murder site at Yonge Street and Finch Avenue. Are we to conclude that the students were the only ones who noticed a deviation from normalcy? By whom was his academic performance and conduct monitored?

A Canadian National Defence spokesperson reported in Vice News that Minassian became a member of the Canadian Armed Forces from August 23 to October 25, 2017 but failed to complete recruit training, and requested voluntary release 16 days after commencement of training. Another aspect that abounds in the cases of mass killings is that the killer was a loner. Also frequently heard is that these individuals were marginalized, not accepted by their peers and not well-liked in general.  In the case of Alexandre Bissonette the young man who murdered six Muslim men in a Quebec City mosque in January 2017, he was bullied and intimidated mercilessly in school, and the Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were loners.

In the wake of this senseless killing the same picture and pattern emerges, although the city of Toronto and its experts struggle to make some sense of it all and pinpoint a veritable diagnosis.

Newspaper reports initially stated that in 2009 his mother stated that her son Alex Minassian was suffering from Aspergers syndrome, a form of autism. The respective agency lost no time in educating the public at large that to state that Asperger’s syndrome may cause an individual to behave in this manner is false at best, and very harmful to a large number of individuals. Autism does not typically cause violence or motivate an individual to drive a rented Ryder van into pedestrians on a crowded city street. Most importantly, they claim the public should be better informed about the array of amazing and unique individuals who have ASD.

Pray tell is the diagnosis really Incel, as a lack of clarity abounds as to where the killer really fits into the online communities of anti-feminist trolls? Or is Incel being used as a scapegoat for untreated mental illness? If the diagnosis is to be accepted, it simply means that intelligence and policing agencies need to be more vigilant in monitoring the online activities of these self-acclaimed Incel adherents. Although the suspect in this horrific killing may not qualify for the nomenclature terrorist, he nevertheless did things that were very concerning, and which were not addressed. While only a small fraction of mentally ill people are violent, they are however more likely to carry out acts of violence if they are not being treated—hospitalized or medicated—for their mental illness. Psychologists studying the Incel movement have suggested it can be linked to existing mental illness including post-traumatic stress disorder and paedophilia.

The displayed behaviors of the killer ran the gamut from feline, to assinine to punishment that should be condign. Perpetrators of violence do not commit their dastardly acts because of any one single factor, and on the issue of mental health it is blatantly apparent that every single part of the system was broken. The simplest remedial measure is that we need to take mental illness seriously.

Basically, every angle that you can think of for looking at the system for getting someone care for mental illness is essentially broken. Absolutely no one saw this motive coming, there are a series of antecedents that we must pay careful attention to if a recurrence in another city or province is to be averted. Incel has now claimed the suspect as one of their own, and there may be others being home grown.