Elliot Rodger was a jihadist – for organised misogyny, if not for organised religion

Like Mohammad Sidique Khan, who set off a bomb on the London Underground nine years ago, Elliot Rodger was young, educated and outwardly respectable.

Like Khan, he killed seven people including himself.

My guess based on his demographics is that Roger was probably an atheist – but otherwise, the two were in many ways twin souls.

Both men were part of violent movements with track records – ones which, while not representative of all they claimed to speak for (Muslims and men, respectively), exploited widely held beliefs’ potential at their most extreme.

Both saw themselves as political, each his movement’s defining rhetoric.

Both were radicalised by peer groups, both stated their motives explicitly and both fit the archetypal profile for the kinds of killers who did what they did.

Both, crucially, saw their victims as deserving what they got.

If the Santa Barbara shooter had been a jihadist, not much about him would have been that different – but the media’s reaction would have been the polar opposite.

The truth is that Elliot Rodger was a jihadist – for organised misogyny, if not for organised religion.

Read my new column at the Daily Dot.

Elliot Rodger was a jihadist – for organised misogyny, if not for organised religion
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