Terror attack by UK celibate extremists is ‘only a matter of time’

COUNTER-TERROR police have conducted their first investigation into the UK’S Involuntary Celibate movement, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

Officers launched an investigation last year after fears were raised about a man who identified with the misogynistic sub-culture known as “incels”.

It is understood the inquiry was launched after the suspect, who lives outside London, began posting worrying and threatening messages online.

Experts suggest as many as 2,000 UK men may label themselves as “incels”,

saying it is only a matter of time before there is a violent attack by someone identifying with the ideology.

The movement, first identified in the Nineties, consists of isolated men who harbour grudges against women and society because they are unable to find a partner to engage in consensual sex.

Counter-terror officers carried out a “disruption” operation against the suspect and arrested him. It is understood nobody was charged and the man is being investigated on suspicion of nonterrorism-related offences.

The ideology mainly exists online but has been linked to terror attacks.

In 2014, Elliot Rodger, 22, a Britishborn college dropout, murdered six people and injured 14 others in a gun and knife attack near the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California.

Before turning the gun on himself, he uploaded a Youtube video titled Elliot’s Retribution in which he said he wanted to “punish women who had rejected him” and punish sexually active men because he was jealous of them.

Two years ago, Alek Minassian, 27, killed 10 people in a Toronto van attack said to have been inspired by an incel mindset. In a Facebook post he boasted that the “incel rebellion” had begun. He told police he was a virgin who had never had a girlfriend.

There have been at least four other incel-related mass shootings in the US, with a death toll of almost 50.

Most of the men in the UK who label themselves as incels are highly secretive and post anonymously. But experts who monitor online activities of incel extremists believe there could be a violent attack in the UK.

Annie Kelly, a PHD student at the University of East Anglia, who has researched online misogyny said: “There are numerous forums out there on which men identifying as incels post, but it tends to be a global network so it is hard to get a sense of the UK picture.

“Much of the language is very violent and given what has happened in the US and Canada, it does seem like it was only a matter of time before we saw something here.”

Violent incels are part of a new breed of potential terror threats that counterterror police are having to monitor.

There are as many as 25,000 jihadists in the UK today with a huge rise in the number of far-right extremists.

But in recent years, the threat posed by Lasits (Left-wing, Anarchist or Single Issue Terrorism) has risen. As well as incels, this might include extreme animal rights activists or so called ecoterrorists.

‘There are numerous forums out there on which men identifying as incels post... The language is very violent’