The New York Post (5/27/14) put the focus on one of the targets of Rodger’s hatred.
GENDER FOCUS
On Friday, May 23, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger murdered six people near the University of California/Santa Barbara before turning the gun on himself. Mass shootings aren’t exactly rare in the US these days, so this one would have probably faded into the background had Rodger not left behind a disturbing video and manifesto laying out the reason for his massacre: He was exacting revenge on women for rejecting him.
A day before his rampage, Rodger posted a seven-minute diatribe to YouTube (5/22/14) titled “Retribution.” “I’m 22 years old and I’m still a virgin,” he declared. “It has been very torturous…. I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it.”
Calling himself “the superior one,” he revealed his plans to “enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB” and “slaughter every spoiled, stuck-up, blonde slut I see inside there,” adding, “If I can’t have you, girls, I will destroy you.”
This wasn’t the only video. Weeks before Rodger’s onslaught, his family alerted police to several videos he had posted to YouTube threatening violence against himself and others. Officers visited his apartment but determined he posed no threat.
It’s hard to believe the same benefit of doubt would apply if, say, a Muslim posted videos declaring plans for violent Jihad, a double standard major media outlets failed to address. The Washington Post (5/25/14) briefly noted that “stereotypes” affect the way police handle suspects, but race was never mentioned, just platitudes about the difficulty of preventing seemingly polite and nonthreatening mass killers with mental health issues.
Rodger’s 140-page screed detailed the evolution of his homicidal hatred for women, including his desire to round all women into extermination camps and starve them to death, leaving just a few alive for procreation purposes. He also revealed that he had more bloodshed planned, a three-phase “retribution” horror show complete with beheadings, a sorority house massacre and the murder of his stepmother and little brother (for being cooler than him).
Corporate media outlets noted these details, but failed to mention the deep-seated racism and white supremacy central to Rodger’s hatred. In his manifesto, Rodger repeatedly held up “blonde white girls” as prized possessions that nonwhite men were unworthy of.
When Rodger learned that his roommates’ black friend managed to have sex with a “white blonde girl” (p. 84), he complained angrily: “How could an inferior, black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves. I deserve it more.” He went on to call him “black filth.” He had similarly racist reactions to Latino (p. 89–90) and Asian men (p. 121).
The New York Times (6/1/14) published a 2,800-word profile of Rodger’s life, but couldn’t find room to mention his racism or his genocidal views toward women. CNN (5/27/14) published “Five Revelations From the ‘Twisted World’ of a ‘Kissless Virgin,’” but not a single revelation mentioned his racism or his end goal for the opposite sex.
It’s not as though Rodger’s rants were limited to his manifesto. He left an online trail of racism and misogyny on a forum called PUAHate (Southern Poverty Law Center, 5/24/14), where extreme misogynists vented their anger at women and at “pickup artists,” or PUAs—supposed dating experts who advise other men on how to trick women into sleeping with them.
The PUAHate crowd despises pickup artists, who they believe exploit and profit from their inability to attract women, which is true. However, the PUAHaters channel their anger at women for rejecting them, creating a radicalizing environment that cultivates extreme misogyny (Jezebel, 5/2/12).
Rodger made no secret of this in his manifesto, saying (p. 117) “many of [the men on the forum] share my hatred of women,” adding, the “website only confirmed many of the theories I had.”
Yet the New York Times (6/1/14) described PUAHate as “an online forum where participants ranted against ‘pickup artists’ who had more success with women,” completely glossing over the violent misogyny it helped fuel. Business Insider (5/24/14) reduced PUAHate in a headline to an “Online Forum for Sexually Frustrated Men.” And the New Yorker (5/28/14) labeled it “a forum dedicated to hating pickup artists.”
Rodger was clearly a disturbed individual who channeled his anger into misogynistic extremism, in which racism and a hateful online community played a central role. Media outlets whitewashing this reality are doing a disservice to their readers and help guarantee that Rodger’s perverse combination of violent racism and sexism will live on with little challenge.
Now, I’m not making a statement, so much as maybe an observation or just asking a question – because it seems odd that I get an email about this subject from FAIR, and the whole event is already framed and ready for people with a certain mindset – to reinforce that mindset – and to what end, for what reason?
Arguments are made that are not substantial but that resonate with certain people and that tends to build a divide, and these divides are branded by website, and they can then be used by snoopers to detect people and run algorithms against them (not as in anti-against, but “on” them, against their data, so to speak).
What this says is that the world is getting much much much smaller without the perception of the masses of the population. Meaning that those who can “talk” to the masses in this way, can attempt control, and provoke incidents that they use to manipulate things politically.
Another thing these sites do is that they present a very wide, but very shallow projection of things, so that the priority is on the reader’s identity, and not on solving, educating, discussing or informing people of these issues. Some of these things may go on, but it is like these types of websites try very hard to minimize the democratic process and nature of the “town sqare” or “national debate”.