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Last week, Luke Pollard, the UK Labour MP for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport, yet again called for a "national incel strategy". According to him, it's vital that we do this to prevent another "incel terror attack" like the Keyham shootings.
I think the first time I actually heard the word was around the time Todd Phillips' Joker had released. What I don't understand is this extreme alarmism of progressives surrounding incels, when they say the exact opposite of Islamist terrorism. An internet subculture of terminally online, socially disabled men who find themselves unable to order a Big Mac without feeling butterflies in their stomachs are such a big threat to our society that we need a national strategy to combat them? This to me seems like it's completely tarred by alarmism surrounding white supremacy and racial animosity. Granted, incels do hold on to ethno-supremacist views, such fringe ideologies always find purchase among those on... the fringes of society, often young, single men with no social life and no job/ a dead end job and having nothing to lose. They spew all the vitriol online because they tend to be non-confrontational in real life, they might claim to support violence but almost never have the stomach to commit violence themselves. They've locked themselves inside their heads, no one's allowed inside and they view the world, society and women through a tiny keyhole into the sewer that is the most toxic spaces on the internet. They aren't hurting anyone but themselves. But why are the "basement dwelling gamur incels" among the most reviled subgroups in the culture war? Is it simply because they spew the most bile against every 'vulnerable' demographic (women, minorities, LGBTs) online?
Incels are at least representative of the general population and plausibly more diverse than it in racial composition. To the extent they have "ethno-supremacist" views, it's along the lines of "women are status seeking hypergamists who love white men and hate minorities." Which, true or not, is only as ethno-supremacist as the progressive take on race (i.e. wanting disparate racial outcomes to be eliminated). It's also unclear to me that they have anti-LGBT views, unless you take ideas like "transmaxing" (transitioning so you have increased sexual opportunities) to be inherently transphobic. It's straight women they hate, not lesbians or gay men.
The reason they're particularly reviled is that they're terminally online (so examples of toxicity are readily available) and they're near-group low status men. Many of their arguments also are simply taking progressive ones and applying them to the sexual relationship sphere, which makes it noxious to people who make those arguments and apply them everywhere except to romantic relationships and which puts them into the near-group in a way that misogynist Islamist radicals aren't.
Expanding on how incels are progressive near-group, with anecdotes: Most progressive women I know have been bitching about incels (while not calling them incels) since before the term incel became mainstream. I think another poster probably hit the nail on the head, that incels are a certain kind of failure-mode of trying to internalize the numale role. The exact details I'm unsure about. It's possible incels have some combination of bad looks, poor social skills or risk-aversion that sets them up for failure. Or they're just not getting the joke.
I challenge that incels are unique in applying woke ideas to romantic relationships. I think the trans movement is already leaning that way. For more anecdotes, some of my friends who are most seeped in trans-apologetics unironically say things like, "not dating a trans person is transphobic," and "trans people are some of the most transphobic groups out there." See also: canceling of Super Straight.
I think the simplest explanation is that incel beliefs come out to reducing the status of women and increasing the status of men. Textbook anti-feminism.
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