April 25, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
11:48
4067 Toronto Attack: Alek Minassian Arrested and Charged
On Monday April 23rd, 2018, 25-year-old Alek Minassian drove a rented van down a Toronto, Ontario, Canada, sidewalk, killing ten people and injuring 15 others. Minassian was apprehended by police and has been charged with ten counts of first degree murder and 13 of attempted murder.In online activity, Minassian described a “rebellion of incels” and men who have been made 'involuntarily celibate.' The suspect also appeared to have an interest in Santa Barbara shooter Elliot Roger who killed six people and published a “manifesto” detailing his sexual frustrations. Classmates of Minassian described him as a socially awkward tech expert, with physical tics that he struggled to control - shaking his hands and tapping his head. A former classmate remembered Minassian as attending special needs classes, as he appeared to be socially disabled and used to wander the school corridors making meowing noises. Several law enforcement sources told media outlets that mental illness may be the cause, that Minassian was not known to police and was not in possession of a firearm.Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Like, I've been reporting on this stuff for many years.
These attacks, these mass murders, and so on.
And I try to do what I can to honor the dead by extracting lessons from it that can help us prevent recurrence of these awful, awful incidents.
And I used to get messages from people when I would report on this stuff.
And they would say, oh, that's weird.
I grew up there. I was just down the street.
I know this place. I was just there last month.
And... Now it's me.
This stretch where this crazy man with the van plowed into these pedestrians, this stretch of Yonge Street between Finch and Shepard, I know very, very well.
I used to live down at the bottom end of it.
In one of the photos of the guy who was apprehended, There's a building I worked in.
I know the shops.
I know the streets.
I know the sidewalks that are now being scoured free of blood and bone.
So it's strong for me, but we're going to go over the facts and we're going to see what can be learned, what can be extracted.
So this is what happened.
So Monday, April 23rd, 2018.
25-year-old Alec Minassian drove...
A rented van at incredibly high speeds in this sidewalk in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
He killed 10 people.
This is all alleged, right?
Right. He killed 10 people.
It was nine and then one more died.
He injured 15 others.
He's been apprehended by the police.
He's been charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder.
The arrest scene was vivid and powerful, terrifying.
He was pulling something out of his pocket.
I think it was a cell phone. He was not found with a gun on him.
And he kept pulling it out and pointing it at the cop, I think, with the clear goal of suiciding by cop, and saying, shoot me!
And the cop did not shoot him.
He was apprehended without gunfire.
So he rented this van and he was traveling southbound and he mounted the curb, smashed into a number of people who were on the sidewalk, and he drove onto the sidewalk multiple times hitting speeds of 60 to 70 kilometers an hour.
This was southbound on Yonge Street from Finch towards Shepherd.
He first ran a red light, jumped up on the sidewalk, Plowed through these people and left a trail of bodies and bone and blood, a crime scene that stretched over a dozen city blocks.
A witness stated that the Manassian looked at the victims directly in the eye during the attack and acted like he was, quote, playing a video game, trying to kill as many people as possible.
It is, of course, the deadliest vehicle-ramming attack in Canadian history and the worst mass killing in Canada in decades.
One of the things that is really tiring and frustrating me is when this stuff happens that people start looking for the team.
Is he a white guy? Can we blame white privilege?
Is he a Muslim? Can we blame this?
Is he my team, your team, their team, bad team, good team?
And people did jump the gun, of course, yesterday in ascribing causality.
The only Clue or hint as to what is a possible motive.
So it's online activity that apparently has been confirmed by Facebook.
Manassian described a quote, rebellion of incels.
That's I-N-C-E-L-S. And these are men who are, they call themselves involuntarily celibate.
And he expressed interest in the 2014 Santa Barbara shooter, Elliot Rodger, who of course killed six people and published an entire manifesto detailing all of his sexual frustrations and issues with women and so on.
Now he was in college for quite a number of years.
And his classmates described this young man as a socially awkward tech expert and he also had physical tics that he had to work really hard to control and struggled to control, shaking his hands and tapping at his head and so on.
One of his former classmates remembers him as attending these special needs classes.
He appeared to be socially disabled and He used to wander the school corridors making meowing noises.
Now, although there were initial reports of terrorism and that he was known to the police, this has been superseded by newer information that mental illness is considered to be the cause, likely cause.
It's not for certain, of course, yet he was not known to police.
He was not in possession of a firearm.
One newspaper in Canada has reported, and I quote, Was quoted in a story in the Richmond Hill Liberal lamenting that her son,
who suffered from a form of autism called Asperger Syndrome, was at risk of losing access to a special program called Helpmate that assisted the teen to, and I quote, work through his cognitive barriers and prepare him for the workplace.
So the Facebook post, again, this seems to have been confirmed by Facebook.
I'm not sure exactly how, but this is confirmed.
The Facebook post that he wrote was this, Private Recruit Manassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sergeant 4chan, please.
And then a See, and then a bunch of numbers.
Actually, not far off from the military stuff, which we'll get to in a sec.
The post goes on to say, the incel rebellion has already begun.
We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys.
We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys.
All hail the supreme gentleman, Elliot.
Roger. So chads, apparently, are the top 10 to 20% of alphas that the women want to sleep with and date and so on.
And there seems to be slim pickings for the betas and zetas and all of that.
Stacys, I think, are the women who only angle for the alphas and so on.
Now the Canadian Armed Forces confirmed that Manassian, and I quote, was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces for two months in late 2017, from 23rd August until 25th October.
He did not complete his recruit training and requested to be voluntarily released from the CAF after 16 days of recruit training.
So, you know, the no-pension-for-violence things, that does seem to be the case with his classmates, but there are other indications.
And, you know, what's the job of the army?
The job of the army is to break things and kill people.
And so it seems to me that if you have no pension for violence, I'm not sure why you'd end up applying to the army.
The witnesses, and my heart goes out to the people who are suffering and will suffer for the rest of their lives based upon what this guy did today.
But the witness reactions are just...
And again, the vividness, because I can see, I know the streets, and I can see very, very clearly in my mind's eye what was going on.
Witness reactions are, one person said, he just went on the sidewalk.
He just started hitting everybody, man.
He hit every single person on the sidewalk.
Anybody in his way, he would hit.
Quote, this person was intentionally doing this.
He was killing everybody.
He kept going. He kept going.
People were getting hit, one after another.
The witness added that many of the victims had been elderly.
Middle of the afternoon, early afternoon.
And he also saw a stroller flying into the air.
The quote is, he started going down on the sidewalk and crumbling down people one by one.
He just destroyed so many people's lives, every single thing that got in his way.
If it was an accident, he would have stopped, but the person just went through the sidewalk.
He could have stopped. A quote, I saw a lot of people lying lifeless on the ground.
It was just so many bodies.
One of his classmates in college said that Alex sent an email on April 19th saying, finally finished college, fuck you all and good riddance.
This is after he finished the last course needed to complete his studies.
Now, as I mentioned, the witnesses said that they thought it was an intentional act.
Here's a quote. He did seem to have control over what he was doing, so it wasn't some sort of impairment where he was swerving.
He just drove straight through and he managed to make a perfect turn at that corner as well It's terrible terrible stuff It's terrible stuff. So, this awful thing has happened, and I strive.
I mean, I read, I do background research, and so on, and I strive to find some lesson that can be extracted from this in a way to honor the dead as best as humanly possible, to die For randomness is terrible, terrible. If there's any way that the death can help instruct us on how to avoid a repetition, then it's worth exploring, even though it's painful and difficult.
But in this particular case, I gotta tell you, I cannot find anything that is going to make things clear, that is going to be a lesson to be learned.
This may have been bad wiring.
I mean, we don't know. We don't know.
We don't know the cause in particular.
We don't know the dominoes that may have fallen, that may have put somebody in the state of mind where this seems like a course of action that can be contemplated.
And that, to me, is very difficult.
I mean, nothing. A millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a percent of what the people are going through, but not being able to even scour the data to find a pattern to help prevent a recurrence.
That's the only flowers I can put on graves in this situation.
There's nothing. I mean, I think we should try to avoid this team playing.
And is it my team? And is it a good team?
Is it a bad team? Because it's a way of avoiding, like to try and use deaths as a way of furthering a political narrative or ideological perspective and so on.
I really genuinely think it's just a way of avoiding the pain of seeing what can sometimes be random rolling death with no causality.
Struck by lightning out of a clear blue sky, no capacity for protection or prevention of recurrence.
It is a kind of agony, I think.
It is for me. Knowing these streets, as I do so well, now knowing that the streets of my town have run red, that the streets of my town are washed in blood, bone, I look for wisdom.
