The Batman is the most significant analysis and critique of incels we have ever seen in popular media. Yet, no one discusses this aspect of the movie. The Youtubers with the giant platforms dedicated to this type of content will discuss how gritty Gotham is, or the eye-black that Bruce Wayne wears, and why it is realistic. However, none of them are bold enough to discuss the Riddler and his white incel army, and I find this troubling.
The Batman provides us with a prescient warning about the looming danger lurking for us by the online radicalization of white boys and men. The movie jars us with the grim reality of the carnage incels and other disaffected white men have the capacity to wrought on society. We witness the community these incels have cobbled together. A community whose foundation is their common shared interest, which becomes metastasized by the fatal confluence of isolation, ignorance, and hate.
These Discord servers and chatrooms are fertile soil for radicalization to germinate. Community members become more militant as they recognize they are in a safe space to air their list of grievances. These men start being vulnerable with each other about their lack of sex, dead-end jobs/careers, and lack of friends. Many express they have never kissed a girl or gone on a date. These confessions and gestures of support create and strengthen bonds in the group as they find kindred souls amongst themselves. In this community, they are not judged because they get no girls — it is their calling card. A badge they wear with an arrogant air of disdain.
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Eventually, someone inserts their toxic form of masculinity into the community. Like a plague, it spreads from one susceptible host to another. It does not take long before the whole community is infected. No longer does the latest plot line from a beloved comic book or the pending release of an acclaimed video game dominate the conversation. Members of the community have devolved. They have been red-pilled.
Now, the banter is about guns. They start to fetishize firearms. Guns convey inherent power over life and death they clamor for. A demented type of control they can exude over those who they deem are the ones who have caused their suffering. These communities bond through racism and antisemitism since other people are the root of their problems. Of course, the grail of these communities is their voracious embrace of misogyny.
The hatred of women in all its forms: objectification, entitlement to their bodies and affections, degradation, threats of violence and sexual violence, and unbridled hate are the sacraments of this pestilence.
In The Batman, the Riddler created a private chatroom or something similar to a Discord server where the tip of the spear, activated white radicalized incels, resided. He had taken action, and now it was their turn to adhere to the terms of their contract. The belonging and admiration of the group were more powerful than killing and terrorizing their community. They live for each other and are once again alone without the other members. A lone misfit in an ocean of normies. The pain of separation from the group was too potent of a penalty that murder was reasonable under this duress.
The newly elected black woman mayor of Gotham was the object of their misplaced white rage.
Most film critics and podcasters with large platforms ignore this part of the movie. They don’t wade into this current. They gloss over the fact that an army of incels almost killed a young Batman. These content creators ignore the community the Riddler created or belonged to, which gave purpose to each of the incels’ lives.
The incel army of The Batman was ignored because these podcasters and content creators farm incels’ desolation. They monetize their isolation. The incels who feast on their content are the ones who drop SuperChats and large tips regularly so they can feel normal —at least part of the time.
The white content creators skirted around the Riddler’s white incel army because those are the same people they siphon money from to sustain and grow their lifestyles.
They refuse even to correct their audience or give them some words of wisdom about the real people whose wanton greed created their plight: greedy older white men.
Just like in life, instead of harnessing their anger and malcontent against the white men responsible for their perceived problems, the incels are unleashed upon the new black woman mayor. Instead of decimating the rest of these older white men’s criminal enterprises, they seek to annihilate a black woman and all those who support her.
That is why The Batman is the most important explanation, examination, and expose of incels, and we are not talking about it.
We have an incel problem. A group of men, the majority of them are white, but a black incel was responsible for a mass shooting recently. These men develop attitudes that make them believe they are entitled to women’s affections and their bodies.
After 9/11, we were worried about Muslims being radicalized over the internet and via YouTube videos. Yet, we don’t even show the scantest concern that white males are being radicalized over the internet. Perhaps, because most Incels target women and non-white men. With white men not being the target of these attacks, the concern for everyone else’s safety is not paramount for them.
We see the destruction that is reaped when these maladjusted white men decide to embrace hate in all its destructive forms. They willingly drink the poison in the chalice of victimhood. Their mind is occupied with hallucinations of the glory. The urge to become a martyr takes up more real estate in the sunless place their heart has become. They believe a perverse version of Valhalla awaits them if they storm a synagogue, black church, migrant bus depo, sorority, or any other location where nonwhites and women populate. Just by raising an assault rifle and squeezing the trigger, they can exert a sense of control that is void in their own lives.
The new trend of livestreaming themselves going on these murderous rampages so the boyz can watch and offer advice in the chat has become one of the more disgusting pillars of these mass shootings. They know that their cowardice will be celebrated by other cowards who seek to annihilate women and people of color.
Many only desire to be reactionary foot soldiers in what they believe is an impending racial war. They will remain vigilant but only attack when attacked. A select few would rather take action in their own hands and become a martyr of an undefined class due to a nonexistent problem.
Dylan Roof believed that he would be viewed as a liberator of the white race. He imagined that his despicable and senseless slaughter of nine beautiful black souls worshipping the Lord would invoke the race war that racists’ fake prophets and sleazy seers have been predicting for the past 80 years. Instead, he rots in a prison cell. In the delusions that circulated his mind he believed this heroism would be repaid by him being rescued from his bondage and revered for his cowardice. As of today, his demented vision has not come to fruition. Each day that transpires hammers into his feeble brain…he was lied to.
These white men have been fed lies and have absorbed the fearmongering generated from specious fallacies like the Great Replacement theory, which has even been mainstreamed by “traditional Republicans.” When prominent white Republicans have mainstreamed this harmful misinformation and promised glory for their wanton and cowardly acts, these hurting young white men continue down this path toward perdition.
When these same prominent white Republicans have done nothing to curb the easy access to weapons of war and high-capacity magazines, the method of slaughter becomes even more imminent and imageable.
People are hurting. Regardless of race or ethnicity…people are hurting, and these depraved people who peddle this disinformation know what they are doing. They are preying on a group of miserable people. We saw Muslims do this to other Muslims. They manipulated the passions of other Muslims by contorting their faith to inspire them to participate in a jihad against some of the most powerful nations in the world.
Our response in America was to suspend/ignore the First Amendment rights of our Muslim brothers and sisters and infiltrate mosques. Privacy protections were eroded as we surveilled loyal Muslim American citizens to find one or two who might be captivated by the siren song of ISIS. We created new intelligence apparatuses to meet this threat head-on.
Yet, when it is white men who are being targeted with dangerous and false propaganda, we sit on our hands. We are unwilling to take even half-measures of what we did against brown people.
The disparate treatment can be summed up by the targets of these freshly-minted white supremacists compared to ISIS. White people who make the laws in this nation are not the ones who these racists will unleash their violence against. Some white people might be the collateral damage, but they are not who they are attempting to maim and murder. ISIS, meanwhile, was seeking to target anyone who was not willing to be subjugated.
How long will we allow the dreams of our neighbors, our children, of fellow Americans to be snuffed out because incels are being radicalized via the internet? Why must we tolerate the scourge of gun violence that emanates in the bowels of the web’s dark corners that transform our bright skies into an opaque nightmare? The dark recesses of the net are where they congregate. It is these private Discord servers where they have erected communities built on their shared perceived rejection from society.
White boys and men are building communities in the uninhabited tombs of the internet. Spaces where these disaffected males can find something they can belong to. An environment where their perceived ostracization from society can be discussed and rejected. In these confines, with a frayed sense of bravado, they can assert that we have not rejected them, but they have rejected us.
In these murky vestibules of the internet, they can find solace and receive permission to blame everyone and everything for their failings except themselves. These solitary nooks on the internet allow them to create villains for the stories they weave for themselves. Their shared hatred of women galvanizes these collectives of maladjusted males. Their currency is their anger.
In their ordinary lives, they feel powerless, so they gravitate towards guns. Fully aware that armed with an assault rifle, they can be the arbiter of who lives and who dies, all by the quick twitch of their index finger. Some lack the physical stature to best another human in a physical confrontation, but armed with an AR-15, they can watch any of their imagined tormentors cower in their presence.
Guns are power. They grant the wielder God-like power. It gives them the power to determine who lives and who dies. It allows them to make those they blame for their pain feel the pain they contend racks their bodies. Firearms are the only thing they believe can make them into men. Guns are more important than a woman’s embrace. They can openly fantasize about avenging any of their perceived slights in their chat groups, message boards, Discord servers, or Telegram groups.
We have an incel problem. Their embrace of right-wing ideology and the power of whiteness shield them from the natural consequences of their actions.
We are less safe as a nation as we allow this problem to fester.
I graduated high school in 1993. My best friend from high school is now an incel.
Needless to say, we are no longer friends. He is white. He has never been married. He has zero children. He is not a MAGA. In fact, he is a Democrat, but not the most articulate one. He is not a virgin. Yet, his relationships with women have always been tortured. The schemes he used to get laid or attract women in his twenties and early thirties are no longer viable. Being a DJ or a bouncer has a shelf-life. Being the quirky guy gets annoying when you are almost 50 and live paycheck-to-paycheck.
The value of height starts to deflate, and the value of your bank account and retirement plan starts to experience rapid inflation. The ability to talk to women and not be creepy becomes paramount. Men who never had to develop personalities because they were blessed with physical attributes start seeing their bodies betray them as they age. The six-pack that was once your calling card has been replaced with a keg, and you lack the ability to hold a conversation about anything other than the local sports teams is a potent form of birth control.
That is this guy’s problem: he never learned to talk to women and not be awkward. He never cultivated any skills, talents, or interests compatible or suitable for women. I know he has not had a date in his 40s. In fact, I don’t think he has gotten laid in the past 15 years, and not by choice.
He wants to date. He wants to be married. He feels entitled to beautiful young women. He hates the notion of dating women who are his own age. He recoils at the thought of women having children. He is the type of man who seriously inquires about a woman’s body count.
He is the man who has no reservations about saving up for a couple of months and blowing his money on lap dances. He once tried to flex on me and our friends that he has had more lap dances than us…and he was serious. He really thought this was a flex.
This person has not been on a date in over 15 years, maybe twenty. He is an incel.
I have watched over time, his attitudes towards women become more hateful. He decries any woman who posts thirst traps as vapid, yet he pines for their attention. He spends more and more time being held hostage by YouTube’s toxic algorithm. Each year, his descent becomes more and more pronounced. His anger has started to pierce the surface. The one thing he was good for was playing Fortnite with me and my daughter. He never had any plans because he never went on any dates.
Slowly, he has become more isolated as his friends have moved away or are busy with wives and kids. He does not have any close female friends. I might have too many women that I am close with, but it should be viewed as an equally red flag when a man has zero female friends.
At first, it was a dry streak, but when his forties arrived, the draught continued. Now we are on the cusp of entering our fifties, it is no longer a drought. It is now a way of life: an identity. All of his married male friends see the world of possibilities of effortlessly getting women (the delusions married men tell ourselves when we were long married before the advent of Hinge, Bumble, and Tinder) and fume as we see him getting no girls.
I know that does not help him, being judged by men with wives and kids. Men who have forgotten or repressed the memories of the slog of dating. Yet, these same men constantly are aware of women hitting on them and flirting with them. If we, married men, get all this forbidden attention, what would it be like if we were single?
Then we see him. He is womanless every Friday and Saturday night, and we start to lose respect for him. If I am being honest, I cannot respect any man who cannot get man/woman/they/them. I wish I did not feel this way, but it is how I feel.
To me, it suggests that you have not cultivated conversational skills. In the case of not having any women, it might mean you harbor some creepy/hateful attitudes towards women. Many men have fallen into the trap of not seeing a woman as a person with dreams, motives, desires, flaws, and aspirations but as an object which only exists for their pleasure. Something to be used up and casually discarded for the next woman, then the next.
I saw this with my high school classmate. Here is a man who is almost 50 trying to date women under the age of 24. I saw the messages he would send women. The whole message was hot. That is what he would write to a potential match: hot. Not you are hot, or it is hot outside, or this soup is really hot. He would say hot and expect the woman to hop in her car and drive with a zealot’s devotion to his pad, copulate with him, and then leave after he got off.
He was stymied when his dating gambits failed. Never once was he self-aware or burdened himself with the arduous task of self-reflection. Instead, he blamed the women for his inability to score a date.
Any man who scores a beautiful woman is because he has money, she is an idiot, or some other factor other than the man actually putting in some effort to get this woman.
With our friendship ending, I can see a descent towards the right. I can see him spending his money on guns. He already spends a lot of his free time playing video games. As his only black friend, I fear that the fracture in our friendship has left him unmoored in a world where being a bigot is more lucrative for a white man than not being one.
I now realize my friend since the sixth grade is an incel, and I failed to see the signs. He is in a prison of his own choosing, and I wish he was strong enough to break free.
We have an incel problem, and it is not just the young who can be afflicted.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Garrick McFadden's work on Medium.