Some men in the "incel" (involuntary celibate) community want the state to intervene in their dating lives. These sexually frustrated men believe that society is biased against them, so they should be given a "government-issued girlfriend." Incels have attracted attention from the authorities—just not in the way they would like.
This week, the California Specialized Training Institute is advertising a training session for police across the state who want to learn more about domestic terrorism. Alongside anarchism, radical environmentalism, white supremacy, and the sovereign citizen movement, the flyer lists "involuntary celibate extremism" as one of the threats. It went viral after independent journalist Ken Klippenstein shared it on social media.
For several years now, U.S. authorities have treated incel-related mass shootings as a serious security risk. The phenomenon of incel counterterrorism is an interesting window into how the U.S. government makes sense of newfangled threats and how far its surveillance reach goes.
