JF

When Elliot Rodger shot and stabbed 14 people in broad daylight in 2014 the enforced reaction in successor-ideology circles was to deny the possiblity of any distinction between him and the archetypal 'entitled' or 'sexist' male.

Because of the volume of writing Rodger left behind this became contentious. I was told it was normal for full cups of coffee to be thrown out of car windows at perceived lesbian couples (again, in 2014). Suggesting some unusual pathology could lead to this was heresy.

Of course there's a grain of truth. Rodger was in part a product of social forces that produce people superficially similar to him. But most of those people don't go on killing sprees. The only possible reading: he was better at toxic masculinity than the rest.

It wasn't just the chan side that encouraged the veneration of St. Elliot, hero of the losers. Liberals encouraged them to see themselves this way and indeed cut off competing lines of inquiry.