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Last week, a 17-year-old boy in Toronto was charged with an act of terrorism in the alleged killing of a woman with a machete the first time such a charge has been brought in a case involving incel ideology.

Also last week, a 20-year-old man who self-identified as an incel short for involuntary celibate allegedly went on a shooting spree in Arizona, targeting couples to express his anger over the fact women had rejected him.

These are just two of the most recent attacks attributed to incels. Incel-related violence has been on the rise for the past seven years, and according to our research, has been linked to the deaths of at least 53 people and scores of injuries.

Incel is the name adopted by an online community comprised almost entirely of men and boys who rage against women and blame them for their sexless lives.

While many are simply lonely and use the community for support in an age of digital isolation, some radicals advocate for social and sexual rebellion. These extremist incels seek revenge through violent attacks against people they call Chads and Stacys, a reference to men and women they perceive as very successful when it comes to sex.

In our new research, we argue governments should recognise incels as ideological extremist organisations and, through stronger policies and laws, start combating misogyny in the same way they fight Islamic extremism.

In our research, we reviewed incel attacks over the past seven years, looking at what the perpetrators were posting online and how they were engaging with others in the community.

We found incels are angry because they believe the sexual revolution has made women promiscuous and manipulative. They believe feminism, the contraceptive pill and womens involvement in politics have fuelled this promiscuity.

But they believe women are choosing to have sex only with Chads, not incels, and feel a sense of injustice and persecution as a result.

According to the incel-run Incel Wiki website, these men view Chads as the only male beneficiaries of the sexual revolution. They hate Stacys because they are vain and obsessed with jewellery, makeup and clothes, and are entitled whores.

Read more: How a masculine culture that favors sexual conquests gave us today's 'incels'

These misogynistic views connect incels to other alt-right, anti-women groups like Pick Up Artists and Mens Rights Activists, which believe feminine values have come to dominate society and men must fight back against a politically correct and misandrist culture to protect their very existence.

Alt-right groups, including incels, have been emboldened by the presidency of Donald Trump in the US, and are certainly active in Australia.

They use online forums to spread their messages of hate, convincing other would-be incels they can blame their social and sexual difficulties on others. Some fantasise about committing acts of violence.

This was the case for Alek Minassian, who has admitted to driving a van onto a sidewalk in Toronto in 2018, killing 10 people. Minassian has told police he was radicalised by other incels online.

Before the van attack, Minassian posted this message on Facebook:

the Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!

The last part of the quote refers to Elliot Rodger, who published a 141-page incel manifesto online before killing six people in a shooting and stabbing spree in California in 2014. He has since become a martyr in the incel community.

Our research shows incel violence presents a similar threat to public safety as religious extremism and its increasing.

Incel extremism fits the definition put forth by Home Affairs for violent extremism:

the use or support of violence to achieve ideological, religious or political goals.

However, Home Affairs apparently does not view misogynistic extremism as such a pressing issue. While some states have developed threat assessment centres that could be used to monitor radical incels, the federal government has not provided important leadership by labelling incels or misogyny a security threat.

Understanding the threat posed by incels is difficult because it requires unpacking and critiquing the misogynistic views that underpin their behaviours. Some men misread this as an attack.

Read more: Remembering everyday violence against women and girls on Dec. 6

Some lessons can also be learned from strategies to counter other forms of violent extremism.

Targeting specific groups can create suspect communities and contribute to feelings of persecution. This, in turn, can increase the chances of people becoming violent. Incels already feel disempowered and victimised, so creating a suspect community could exacerbate the problem.

Our research suggests the most effective interventions should occur at a societal level.

One reason for this is the anonymous nature of the incel movement. These men tend not to admit to their beliefs in public, relying instead on comments from opinion leaders to legitimise them. If we counter these types of misogynistic statements and deem them a security threat, it could lessen their impact with individual men.

This also means not allowing the mainstream media, politicians or public commentators to excuse or justify gendered violence when it happens.

There is also plenty of evidence that tackling misogyny in this way could help reduce domestic violence, as well as all other forms of violent extremism.

Read more: 'Ideological masculinity' that drives violence against women is a form of violent extremism

Beyond this, health, education and social workers could be trained to spot at-risk behaviours in individual men and act when appropriate.

Following ideas surfaced by other researchers on countering violent extremism, we advocate taking a public health approach that allows us to address the feelings of isolation and alienation among incels and intervene at early stages to prevent violence from occurring.

Waiting for radicalised people to start planning attacks is too risky. Germany and Norway have had significant success changing opinions and behaviours by targeting at-risk individuals at earlier stages of potential radicalisation.

It is time for Home Affairs to end its preoccupation with external threats and instead address the threats within. Misogyny needs to be understood as a real threat to our public and private security.

Original post:
'Incel' violence is a form of extremism. It's time we treated it as a security threat - The Conversation AU

Tiana Lowe, a conservative commentator for the Washington Examiner who recently wrote an article defending Musk, said she hoped it was a sign that Musk fans and Trump fans could find common ground over their shared enemies.

We don't see him hinting and nodding and winking at the alt-right, and we don't see him hinting or nodding or winking at racism or sexism, Lowe said. But there is sort of an attitude of, if Texas is going to let me run my business, that's great. If fake news media is going to say lies about me, screw them. And I think that really does kind of resonate with Trump. Musks representatives did not return a request for comment.

Before the Covid-19 crisis, the only things both men had in common seemed to be their shared desire to send mankind back to the moon, and their tendency for unfiltered, occasionally nonsensical tweets.

Musk, who is a registered independent voter and previously described his views as moderate, has openly criticized Trump in the past, suggesting in 2016 that he doesnt seem to have the sort of character needed to be president, blasting him in 2017 for withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement and withdrawing from his business advisory groups as a result. In one of his rare political endorsements, he threw his weight behind Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who shared his views on a universal basic income in an increasingly automated society.

But unlike other tech billionaires, whom Trump often attacks for disagreeing with him, the president continued to express his admiration for the South African-born polymath, even before the coronavirus. He likes rockets. And he does good at rockets, too, by the way, he told CNBC at Davos in February, calling him one of the worlds great geniuses, and one of our very smart people, and we want to cherish those people.

Trump campaign deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews said in a statement that the president has breathed new life into space exploration and taken bold steps towards guaranteeing American space dominance. She said the Obama-Biden administration essentially shut down the space program and made America reliant on Russia for space travel. The statement did not mention Musk.

From the beginning of the crisis, Musk, the temperamental billionaire leader of SpaceX and Tesla, has frequently questioned mainstream scientific research, reporting and policy on Covid-19, to the point that Twitter was forced to deal with a wave of complaints suggesting the social-media platform remove his tweets for spreading disinformation. He accelerated the proposal of hydroxychloroquine as a potential cure from the backwaters of Bitcoin twitter discussions into the mainstream, off of two tweets (maybe worth considering), bucked government lockdowns in order to keep his electric cars in production and recently stated that he believed policies designed to keep Americans safe were violating their constitutional rights. As he bluntly tweeted in March: The coronavirus panic is dumb.

In the process, hes done things that Trump and his followers more than happily applauded, such as slamming CNN in April when they reported that he had not distributed ventilators to California, as he had once promised. What I find surprising is that CNN still exists, he tweeted, followed by a flurry of evidence that he had sent the promised ventilators to hospitals across the state. And as Trump equivocates on whether states should reopen their businesses, Musk, as a wealthy private citizen with billions at his disposal and a noted reputation for erratic behavior, is able to do what he cannot: openly defy government lockdown orders, and tweet his anger at government officials with impunity.

Read the original:
Trump and Musk unite over Twitter, the moon and sticking it to the establishment - POLITICO

While we were waiting for Level 2 and the daily COVID updates, the New Zealand Police have been covertly breaching our rights. On the morning of May 13th, Detective Sergeant Tom Fitzgerald announced that the New Zealand Police had carried out a trial of Clearview AI facial recognition software.

While they ultimately concluded that they would not be implementing this technology as the value to investigations has been assessed as very limited the testing of this software raised many concerning issues.

This trial was not approved by the appropriate channels and the software tested was beyond problematic. Alongside the potential privacy breaches the software may have enabled, the programme itself was created by white-supremacists.

A recent investigation of Clearview AI exposed extensive connections between many high ranked employees with anti-Semitic hate groups, white nationalists extremists, and other Alt-Right movements.

Marko Jukic, the man who corresponded with the New Zealand Police about the software, has since left the company after being discovered as the author of excessive hate speech publications.

Despite the publication of Clearviews ties to these radical groups being released in early April, the New Zealand Police were still trialling the software as late as May 11th.

Even if you cant see the problem with the Police, as a representative of the New Zealand government, allying itself with a company composed of white nationalists, there are several other problems with the software. Having people who hold these beliefs involved in the creation of the software likely means that it is not fit for purpose.

While AI itself is a neutral tool, it learns through the data it is fed by its developers. This data, and thus the programme, can be affected by implicit human bias or in this case, explicit hate.

The most famous example of bias in AI was Amazons Rekognition. This facial recognition software was independently tested and matched the identity of 28 members of the United States Congress with convicted criminals. These incorrect matches disproportionately involved people of colour.

Although Clearview AI markets itself as 100% accurate, it has never been independently tested so there is nothing stopping the company claiming this.

The overrepresentation of Mori and Pasifika people in the New Zealand criminal justice sector due to targeted arrests and harsher sentencing is a national disgrace.

Yet the New Zealand Police have illegally trialled a software which could exacerbate this problem through inaccurate matches caused by coded bias. Among many other legal rights, this breaches New Zealand citizens right to be free from discrimination.

Even outside the discriminatory effects of this software, this trial contravenes an untold amount of privacy rights. Facial recognition technologies are most effective when they have a large database of profiles, a catalogue of real peoples identities, which the software compares an image against to find a match.

The larger the database, the more content the AI can test against, and the more accurately it matches profiles. Clearview has 2.8 billion profiles on the database, mostly images illegally lifted from social media sites. It is more than likely many New Zealanders will be on the database.

Not only have the Police allied themselves with white-supremacists by using Clearview, but they are also endorsing illegal data collection practices and prioritising their own investigative powers over citizens privacy rights.

Privacy Commissioner John Edwards responded to news of this testing in a very disappointing manner, saying he was a little surprised by this one. Given the sole role of the Privacy Commissioners Office is privacy protection, youd hope for a bit more than surprise; something like outrage and decisive condemnation of the polices actions maybe?

The Police have displayed an extreme lack of transparency around exactly what the trial entailed, so it is unclear just how many New Zealanders had their privacy rights breached and how these rights were breached.

Because the softwares matching ability would need to be comprehensively tested, I would hazard a guess that many people had their privacy breached over the course of the testing.

New Zealand doesnt have privacy principles written into our constitution like other countries, so we rely on the office of the Privacy Commission to protect our privacy rights and the lack of outrage they have shown is genuinely concerning.

The public deserves greater accountability upon what this trial involved and how it was ever carried out without the appropriate approval. The Polices refusal to respond to Radio New Zealands breaking of this story was especially shameful.

See the original post here:
Facial Recognition Software Designed by Alt-Right Extremists, Covertly Trialed by NZ Police Another Form of Colonial Violence - Salient

Photo courtesy of Megan Thee Stallion.

Karma is savage. After pop music stan Twitter was torn asunder by various nonsenses over the weekend, Billboard revealed that Megan Thee Stallion and Beyonc's remix of "Savage" is now the number one song in the country and sits atop the Hot 100.

It's something of an unexpected event. Upon its release earlier this month, the "Savage" remix was originally locked in a chart battle with the Nicki Minaj-assisted remix of Doja Cat's "Say So." "Savage" originally settled for the number-two slot (making a lot of history along the way), but has proven to be more than just a stat-juicing novelty remix. The "Savage" remix, a complete reimagining of Megan's original track, has shown considerable staying power. It topped the digital sales chart, and was the number two most-streamed song in the country. It's also garnered wide support from radio, and proceeds from the song will benefit families affected by COVID-19 in Beyonc and Megan's joint hometown of Houston, Texas.

Of course, it's hard not to view the song's coronation in light of recent controversies.

Beyonc was name-checked in a now-infamous Instagram post from Baroque pop songstress Lana Del Rey on Friday. "Now that Doja Cat, Ariana, Camila, Cardi B, Kehlani and Nicki Minaj and Beyonc have had number ones with songs about being sexy, wearing no clothes, f**king, cheating etc.can I please go back to singing about being embodied, feeling beautiful by being in love even if the relationship is not perfect, or dancing for money," wrote Del Rey. The oft-flower crown-adorned singer was widely criticized for her framing of the issue, and has spent much of the holiday weekend doubling down on her original post.

(Megan was not mentioned in Del Rey's post. Perhaps because she did not have a number one song at the time, or perhaps because Del Rey heeded Megan's warning in her track "B.I.T.C.H.": "I be quiet, but you out here tellin' stories, one-sided / I ain't perfect and I try to fix the shit that ain't workin' / But it's 2020, I ain't finna argue 'bout twerkin'.")

Meanwhile, Doja Cat has also spent the weekend in damage-control mode after allegations arose that she used to hang in video chats with members of the alt-right, and had recorded a song making light of a racial slur. "I shouldnt have been on some of those chat room sites, but I personally have never been involved in any racist conversations," the rapper and singer wrote in response on Instagram. "Im sorry to everyone I offended."

Megan, meanwhile, passed her time chilling in her backyard with her French Bulldog, Foe thee Frenchie, according to her Instagram.

"This is our first, but it damn sure wont be our last!" Megan has now written on Instagram in response to the chart placement news. "I love yall so much."

Beyonc has now joined Mariah Carey as the only artist to have number one hits as a solo artist in the '00s, '10s, and '20s so far. The song is now Beyonc's seventh number one (not including her work with Destiny's Child).

The "Savage" remix is just the seventh collaboration between two female solo musicians to hit the number one spot in history, and 2020 is now the first year in which two such collaborations reached the peak.

For those playing along at home, Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga's mega-collaboration "Rain on Me" will not be eligible for the charts until next week. It's still early, but by all accounts the song has a strong chance of debuting at number onemeaning 2020's female duet chart history could be far from over.

Related: Five Thoughts On The Rain on Me Music Video

Link:
Beyonc and Megan's "Savage" Hits Number One, Proving Karma Is Real - W Magazine

Ellin Stein considers whether Times Radio could be part of a wider campaign against public service broadcasting in the UK

There is no obvious reason why an announcement that The Times and the Sunday Times were launching a radio station should have raised an alarm. After all, the initial line-up promises such highly-regarded voices as Channel 4 Newss Cathy Newman and John Pienaar, until recently the BBCs respected deputy political editor.

Theres always a chance Times columnists like climate-change denier Nigel Lawson or the performatively politically incorrect Rod Liddle may get a berth, but on the whole Times Radio is positioning itself as a sober alternative to the news and politics aspect of BBC Radio 4.

So why the paranoia?

The announcement last winter came at the height of the governments campaign to demoralize/kill off the BBC, leaking (to the Sunday Times) that the license fee would be scrapped and revving up its army of Twitter trolls to complain bitterly about BBC bias and taxes imposed by unelected bureaucrats.

The concerted attack on the license fee brought to mind an online manifesto written by Dominic Cummings when he was heading up the New Frontiers Foundation. In it, Cummings declared that the Conservative Party needed to realize the BBC was a mortal enemy, that the privileged closed world of the BBC had to be turned upside down, that its very existence should be the subject of a very intense and well-funded campaign.

Cummings went on to say that there were three structural things that the Right needs to happen in terms of communications 1) the undermining of the BBCs credibility; 2) the creation of a Fox News equivalent / talk radio shows / bloggers etc. to shift the centre of gravity; 3) the end of the ban on TV political advertising.

(The ban on political advertising was upheld by the European Court of Human Rights. Though this is not changed by the UK departing the EU, there have been many Conservative voices arguing we should leave the ECHR too. If the ban was overturned it would give, as in the US, a big advantage to any British political party able to amass a huge war chest for such ad buys and enhanced influence for the donors who provide the funds.)

But why should Cummings have cared about radio (admittedly this list was written in 2004 and today he might well have substituted podcast)?

Many British people may be unaware of the pivotal role AM talk radio played in the rise of the Alt-Right in the US and the radicalization of listeners that culminated in the creation of the Trump base.

Starting in 1988, Rush Limbaugh pioneered a new form of talk radio best described as political infotainment. Originally Limbaugh combined slightly right-of-centre Republican politics with a Kenny Everett-like zaniness, but over the years raised the ante and grew more extreme to keep the audience engaged. Competition for the Republican audience became a race to the lunatic fringe, and hosts like Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, and Bill OReilly who would go on to be Fox News most visible editorial commentators increasingly peddled a toxic blend of personal slurs, conspiracy theories, and thinly-disguised white nationalism.

There is a long tradition of US radio broadcasters using the airwaves to disseminate such views. In the 1930s, Father Coughlin a Catholic priest who began by espousing social justice, supporting the New Deal, and denouncing the KKK and at his height reached some 30 million listeners over time allowed his hatred of international finance to morph into a hatred of Jews in general (still a well-trodden path, it would seem). His shows stridently promoted an anti-Communist, anti-Semitic, pro-fascist agenda until he was finally taken off the air when war in Europe broke out.

In radios early heyday, AM stations dominated the medium. They were mostly owned by local entrepreneurs and formed a latticework that gave Americans something to listen to as they drove the long empty highways. Programming ranged from mainstream comedy stars like Jack Benny on stations affiliated to one of the big networks to, on small independents, regional music like Country & Western or fire-breathing religious programming, reinforcing the cultural linkage between rural communities, country music, and evangelical preachers that persists to this day.

There were successors to Coughlins virulent anti-leftist tradition on the airwaves during the Cold War but they were balanced out with more mainstream and even progressive voices. But then three factors led to AM Radio becoming dominated by not only conservative but increasingly demagogic right-wing voices.

One force towards extremism was the migration of listeners from AM to the FM band starting in the late 60s.

FM had always been the home of obscure rarified programming, like classical music or Latvian-language broadcasts, but when freeform rock stations started colonising it because of the better fidelity, the giant youth demographic followed, leaving AM with programming that didnt need good sound quality like talk radio and baseball games. As a result, by the 1980s, audience numbers and the price of an AM license had plummeted.

The biggest factor in unleashing the Conservative dominance of talk radio was the Reagan administrations revoking of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. This regulation had meant that in order to keep their licenses, broadcasters had to devote airtime to issues of public importance while ensuring both sides of the debate were fairly represented. It also gave anyone subject to a personal attack on a program a right to reply. This ensured programs were less incendiary and more tethered to reality.

The final boost to conservative talk radio was the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which lifted restrictions on the number of stations that could be owned by any one company. The result was the relatively cheap AM stations being snapped up by conservative-leaning media corporations such as Clear Channel and, more recently, Sinclair Broadcasting, providing a bully pulpit for Republican candidates while pushing party politics ever further to the right and diminishing whatever party leaders they considered insufficiently zealous, like Mitt Romney.

However, with the rise of internet stations and the inevitable shrinking of its predominately over-50 demographic, the AM stations are once again on the decline.

Times Radio isnt going to be on AM but on DAB and streamed. If Rupert Murdoch really wanted to create a beachhead for right-wing shock jocks, he already has Times Radios stablemate TalkRADIO, which features hosts like Dan Wootton, Julia Hartley-Brewer, and James Whale.

More than likely he just wants to siphon talent and audience from BBC Radio 4, and any resulting loss of BBC influence is an added benefit. Still, when Cummings has an ideological and Murdoch a financial interest in seeing a project succeed, its worth keeping a wary eye on.

Read more from the original source:
Is Murdoch's New Radio Station Part of Dominic Cummings' Onslaught on his 'Mortal Enemy' the BBC? - Byline Times