THE DOG THAT DIDN’T BARK: Why Is the Media Ignoring the Montreal Shooter’s Antisemitism?
In the wake of the shooting, the suspect allegedly left behind a 104-page manifesto, which is now public. In it, he cited feminism, liberalism, capitalism, pornography, and male isolation, among a slew of other factors, as components of a social rot that must be addressed through violent revolution. “I call on all of you now, and I ask you to join me,” he wrote. “Let us be the initiators of a new bloodletting, one in which the blood will flood out from the lacerated bodies of our opponents; all those culpable people, be they bourgeois or lumpen, who hitherto have remained unpunished.”
The apparent manifesto, which ended with a call to “KILL THEM ALL!” was laden with incel ideology and rambling diatribes against women as well as hateful and delusional commentary on “homosexuals,” “black people,” and “immigrants,” among other groups.
The alleged shooter also referred to the “influence of Zionist Jews,” “elite Zionists and their Western bourgeois allies,” and the idea that Israel serves as a “kind of base” that Jews, with their “newly acquired power,” have been using to “assist in the expansion of capitalist hegemony.”
Yet virtually no Canadian coverage of the attack mentions these references to Jews, Zionists, or Israel. Nor do they note that the attacker clearly harbored long-standing antisemitic and anti-Zionist conspiracy theories.
Instead, articles from major outlets like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Global News, and CTV, among many others, focus almost exclusively on what they described as Hatfield’s “violent incel” ideations and “anti-feminism.” Canadian journalist and author Warren Kinsella noted the omission, writing on X that these major media outlets included “not one mention of the killer’s antisemitism, seen throughout his manifesto.” Joe Roberts, the executive director of the Jewish Federation of Tulsa, Oklahoma, acknowledged, “Yes, the Montreal shooter was an incel. Yes, he was a revolutionary Marxist. That is not the end of the story. It is the beginning. Because his manifesto is also explicitly antisemitic and anti-Zionist, and the media’s refusal to say that plainly is indefensible.”
Earlier this month, Ilya Shapiro wrote on his Substack, “It’s Amazing That the Heart of Antisemitism in America Lies on Campus,” and the same is true in Canada. In both nations, some of those young students become journalists. The alleged shooter’s references to the incel movement gives left-leaning Canadian journalists all the excuse they need to minimize his antisemitism.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): More on campus hate here.