He May Be the World's First Incel Terrorist

Oguzhan Sert is serving a life sentence in Canada as a convicted terrorist, but as Lana Hall writes in Maclean's, he appears to be the first person in the world convicted of his particular brand of terrorism. As a 17-year-old, Sert walked into a massage parlor in Toronto in 2020 and savagely stabbed 24-year-old Ashley Noelle Arzaga to death. The two had never met. As he told investigators, Sert did so in the name of the incel—or involuntary celibate—movement, which began as an online subculture of lonely people carping about not being able to find romantic partners but has since morphed in a murderous way. A small subset of men—using a 2014 attack in California as its inspiration—has embraced an ideology that blames women as a whole for their plight and sees violence against them as justified. Sex workers in particular are vilified.

Hall explores all this in her story and also how prosecutors decided to take the unprecedented step of labeling Sert a terrorist under a law that defines terrorism as a crime meant to intimidate the public and committed "in whole or in part for a political, religious, or ideological purpose." In last year's case, they successfully argued Sert fits the last definition, even though his case didn't fit the standard vision of terror attacks—only one victim, for one thing. As a result, "Sert's case expands not only the definition of a terrorist, but that of a victim," writes Hall, referring to the view that sex workers might deserve to be victims of violence. (Hall notes that she worked in a similar massage parlor years earlier.) Read the full story, which notes that Sert was diagnosed as autistic while in prison. (Or check out other longform recaps.)