As written in The Conversation by Tandeep Sidhu, Department of Sociology and Criminology.
The horrific details surrounding the shootout in Montréal, which left three dead, are coming to light as officials are sharing more information.
A camouflage-clad gunman armed with a rifle ambushed Montréal police officers in the city’s Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood.
Mohamed Lamine Benredouane, a member of the city’s police force since 2021, was killed while engaging with the suspect. Benredouane leaves behind his pregnant wife and a young child, and his loss is felt in the policing community and beyond.
Michael Mizrahi, a beloved member of his community, was identified as the civilian killed in the shootout.
An act of terrorism?
Ian Lafrenière, Québec’s domestic safety minister, said just hours after the shooting that it wasn’t linked to terrorism.
This statement is troubling not just because it was made prematurely, in the early stages of the investigation, but also because it contradicted media reporting that outlines the shooter’s grievances in a manifesto linked to the “involuntary celibacy” or “incel” movement. There is growing evidence of an ideological dimension to the shooting.
Media accounts of the manifesto detail how the shooter’s grievances used incel rhetoric, arguing for the erosion of women’s rights and freedoms, and takes specific aim at liberalism as a source of male suffering.
The disturbing details of the manifesto advocate for a return to traditional values and call for a new social order.
The shooter, from Lethbridge, Alta., engaged in this senseless act of violence in the same city where the École Polytechnique massacre took place almost three decades earlier.
Read the full story at The Conversation.
