Timoty G., 18, was arrested in Saint-Etienne and charged with terrorist conspiracy. He is suspected of planning to attack women with knives. This case symbolizes the emergence of the “incel” ideology in France.
This is a first in France. Never before has the French justice system charged a man with a planned attack of exclusively male-dominated inspiration, known as “incel” (a contraction of the expression involuntary celibate ). An 18-year-old high school student was arrested in Saint-Etienne and charged on Tuesday, July 1 , with terrorist conspiracy with a view to preparing one or more crimes against persons. He was imprisoned following his hearing before a judge of liberties on Tuesday evening at the Paris judicial court, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Timoty G. was arrested Friday by police officers from the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI), the department dedicated to combating terrorism in France. At the time of his arrest, near the public high school he attends, the young man was carrying two knives in his bag. He made no secret of his adherence to “incel” theories and his frequent viewing of videos by masculinist influencers, particularly on the social network TikTok.
This is the first referral to the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) for facts exclusively related to the “incel” ideology. This ideology, born in North America, posits that young white men are victims, in their search for a partner who meets their expectations, of women’s liberation and competition from immigrants. These misogynistic and racist theories are notably promoted by the British influencer Andrew Tate, followed by 11 million people and who escaped prosecution for human trafficking and rape in Romania following pressure from the Trump administration on Bucharest. The “incel” movement also glorifies far-right terrorist mass murderers such as the Australian Brendon Tarrant and the Norwegian Anders Breivik. The Netflix series
Adolescence , released in the spring and which was a great success, highlighted the toxic and misogynistic influences to which young men are exposed online.
Rising threat
The very first mass shooting committed in the name of “incel” ideology dates back to 1989 in Canada: a 25-year-old man, self-proclaimed “anti-feminist,” opened fire at the École Polytechnique de Montréal, killing 13 students and a secretary, before committing suicide. This attack is one of the worst mass shootings in Canadian history. In 2014, in California, Elliot Rodger, who had proclaimed his hatred of society and women in an online video, killed six people, including three women, before committing suicide. In April 2018, Alek Minassian killed 11 people, mostly women, in a truck attack in Toronto, Canada. In 2021, Jake Davidson killed five women in Plymouth, United Kingdom, before taking his own life.
In France, the “incel” movement is still in its infancy, but the DGSI (Directorate General for Information and Security) believes it is one of the rising threats in the sphere of violent radicalism. It primarily affects very young individuals, often minors. The knife attack carried out by a student at the Notre-Dame-de-Toutes-Aides high school in Nantes on April 24, in which a 15-year-old student died, has, according to a police source, an “incel” dimension, even if it is not exclusive.
In terms of terrorism, two recent cases also have this dimension. The first, already judged, involved a young woman of jihadist persuasion, a candidate for departure to Syria, and two young followers of Nazism. None of them committed the crime, but the content of their discussions, on encrypted messaging, demonstrated a desire to commit a mass crime to take revenge on society or to kill the people they considered their school bullies. The other case with a partially “incel” dimension involves a young man from Hauts-de-France close to the far right, suspected of planning violent actions, indicted in September 2023 and since imprisoned.Asked by AFP, Maria Snitsar, Timoty G.’s lawyer, said she had
“met a teenager who is suffering and not a fighter preparing for action.” “The investigation will bring this case back to its true proportions in terms of the qualifications and personality of the accused ,” she hoped. Contacted by
Le Monde , Maria Snitsar declined to make any further comments.
