Montreal shooter’s ‘incel’ manifesto espoused wide ranging societal grievances

Warning: Graphic content

The gunman behind a shootout in Montreal on Monday that ended with three people dead – a police officer, a civilian, and the gunman – left behind a manifesto containing violent messages targeting women, police and others.

The Quebec coroner’s office has confirmed the name of the shooter as Seth Scott Hatfield, a 25-year-old from Lethbridge, Alta. Citing a police source, Noovo Info reported that the document was found in the shooter’s hotel room.

The manifesto, which spans 104 pages and bears Hatfield’s name, concludes with a call for others to arm themselves and enact harm on their perceived opponents. CTV News has made the editorial decision to not quote directly from, nor publish or link to the manifesto.

The document – written in an essay style with citations and sources – repeatedly makes reference to the state of the Western world and espouses predominantly anti-women rhetoric consistent with the “incel” or “involuntarily celibate” ideology.

Research released last year based on a survey of members of the so-called “incel” community found that among their most consistent characteristics, “it would be incredibly poor mental health and their feelings of bitterness, frustration, and distain towards women.”

For example, in the document, the gunman offers various ideas for restricting women, taking them out of the workforce by replacing them with robots and suggesting they wouldn’t put up a significant fight.

“This offender … really tries to clumsily intellectualize what he’s done and legitimize this movement,” Michael Arntfield, a criminologist and professor who has seen the manifesto, told CTV News Channel on Tuesday.

The manifesto also makes numerous disparaging remarks about the bourgeois social class – a reference to those who are more wealthy or privileged – as well as various types of people he views as swindlers, including proponents of Christianity and cryptocurrency. It also attributes blame for increased loneliness in young men to video games and pornography, while asserting the ranks of likeminded individuals are growing.

“There’s no core ideology other than aggrieved men who watch a lot of pornography and think that’s how their lives should be,” Arntfield said. “This individual seems to be taking it in a new direction, where he’s introducing biological arguments as to why this all needs to be course corrected, and then ultimately it ends with a call to mass violence.”

The document also details what the gunman viewed as specific targets that, in his estimation, were deserving of dire consequences, including major real estate brokerages, private equity firms, supporters of Zionism, health insurance CEOs, pick up artists, plastic surgeons and those profiting from mass immigration.

Underpinning the entire manifesto was an anti-capitalist sentiment, recurrent reference to hypergamy – coupling up with someone of higher status – and a belief that society is structured in a way that results in inequality for white men who are perceived to be less physically attractive.

It also includes some ramblings about police, how to avoid them when enacting a purported mission and ways to fight back if encountered.

On Monday, police agencies across Canada were informed internally about the manifesto, heightening already elevated concerns about further violence against police forces.

In a statement to CTV News, the Alberta RCMP confirmed that, “as with other police forces,” the agency had received a message from Quebec authorities advising them “to exercise extreme caution and remain vigilant as the tragic incident unfolded in Montreal.”

“We’ve received a subsequent message, that since the incident is over, we can revert to our existing security posture,” said Alberta RCMP spokesperson Fraser Logan. “With four police separate incidents of police officers having been injured or killed in less than two weeks, our employees are encouraged to continue exercising sound judgment, maintaining situational awareness, and following established officer safety practices while carrying out their duties.”

Also noting a marked increase in instances of violence against police over the last decade in Canada, Kevin Halwa, National Police Federation chair said in an interview on CTV News Channel on Tuesday that it should go “without saying” that “those sort of thoughts and comments are completely unacceptable.”

While authorities have cautioned against speculating a motive for the shooting, on Tuesday afternoon the RCMP confirmed “that there was indeed a manifesto,” but did not provide any additional information.

“I think it’s very early to identify exactly what his intent was,” said former Ottawa police chief Charles Bordeleau on CTV News Channel Tuesday, adding that the information in this manifesto, like others, “seems to be all over the place,” and contains “a lot of hatred for different groups.”

“The investigators will have to comb through that, piece together other information through social media and any other information that they’ll gather through search warrants, speaking to his friends, his university colleagues, to get a picture of who this individual was and what potentially led to his taking these types of actions,” he said.

With files from CTV National Quebec Bureau Chief Genevieve Beauchemin, CTV News Montreal, and CTVNews.ca’s Kayla Thompson