Matt Walsh’s Daily Wire article is “members only,” so in case you’ve been hiding under a rock — or getting your news from the mainstream media — I’ll summarize what happened in Frisco, Texas, this week: A high school junior, Austin Metcalf, was stabbed to death Wednesday morning at a track meet by a senior from another high school, Karmelo Anthony. It was raining Wednesday morning. The various teams at the track meet each had set up awnings in the bleacher area around the stadium so that their athletes could get out of the rain (or, had the weather changed, to be sheltered from the sun). For reasons that have yet to be explained, Anthony, who attended Centennial High School, decided to get under the awning of the team from Memorial High School, which Metcalf attended. Members of the Memorial team objected to Anthony’s uninvited presence in their area, and Metcalf was trying to enforce the eviction:
One witness told an officer that they were sitting with Metcalf under their school’s tent during a track meet at the stadium when someone they didn’t know, identified as Anthony, came over to them.
The witness said Metcalf told Anthony to leave the tent when Anthony grabbed his bag, opened it, reached inside and said, “touch me and see what happens.” The police document said no one thought Anthony had a weapon.
One witness said Metcalf touched Anthony, and another said Metcalf grabbed Anthony.
Anthony then pulled out a knife and stabbed Metcalf once in the chest before running away, according to police.
“Touch me and see what happens.”
That’s probably evidence of what a lawyer would call premeditation.
Austin Metcalf was stabbed right in the heart. He was white, his killer was black. We can easily imagine what the media coverage would be like if the races of killer and victim were reversed. Immediately, it would be assumed that racism — “RAAAAACISM!” — was the motive, and there would be a thousand op-ed commentaries about the lessons to be learned from this shocking hate crime. As it is, however, the possibility of this being a crime inspired by racial hatred isn’t getting any media attention.
As a conservative journalist, one point I try to keep in mind is that, if it weren’t for liberal bias in the media, there would be no need for conservative journalism. If the media — including both news and entertainment media — were providing a balanced and objective view of reality, then my work of pointing out the media’s lies, distortions and omissions would be unnecessary. This point is often missed when people get angry over media coverage of sensitive issues like race, sexuality, crime, immigration, etc. Unless we are mindful of what we’re doing, conservative journalists are at risk of being mistaken for ax-grinders.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying, I plead not guilty.
Whatever liberals want to accuse me of, whatever labels they want to slap on me — “far-right extremist” or whatever — they are missing the point. It does not matter what my opinions may be on any particular policy issue, or how my opinions might be categorized, what actually matters are the failures of media institutions. In the particular example of Adolescence, we can say that Netflix has failed by producing a misleading depiction of youth violence and that the news media have failed in their coverage and commentary about this phenomenally popular series.
We may predict with absolute certainty, based on prior history, the next phase of the media campaign around Adolescence. Critics of the series will be labeled “far-right,” etc., for pointing out the vast gulf separating (a) the reality of youth violence in England and (b) the way youth violence is depicted in the Netflix series. The media are treating Adolescence as if it were documentary, and thereby encouraging officials to base public policy on the screenwriter’s imagination, rather than on the reality of juvenile crime. Do I have opinions about effective crime prevention policy? Yes, and I suppose some of those opinions might be considered controversial, but that’s irrelevant to the controversy around Adolescence. The point is, this dramatization should not be made the basis of public policy, which is what the media are trying to do.
What I did in my 3,000-word post Thursday was to point out that the writers of Adolescence had cited three specific incidents in England where teenagers had committed fatal stabbings as the inspiration for their project. Upon investigation, none of these crimes remotely resembles the plot of Adolescence, which is about a young boy who “has been deeply disturbed by school bullying via social media centred on incel subculture.” The creators of Adolescence have talked extensively about their desire to provoke a discussion of “young male violence,” but “didn’t want to blame the parents,” and thus settled on “the attraction of the so-called ‘manosphere'” as the teen killer’s motive.
It is therefore highly relevant that (a) no fatal stabbing by a minor in England has ever been attributed to such a motive, and (b) the alarming rise of knife attacks in England has mainly involved minorities from immigrant communities, rather than white boys like “Jamie Miller,” the protagonist of Adolescence. Despite this, the media commentary — e.g., MSNBC calling the Netflix series “a necessary lesson in modern day masculinity” — treats the dramatic fiction as if it were a documentary.
Now, from Texas, we get the unexpected exclamation point. Media accounts of the stabbing death of Austin Metcalf are woefully lacking in background information about the killer, Karmelo Anthony, and this dearth of information is . . . Well, mystifying might be the proper adjective. A heinous murder happens, and we expect reporters to dig up facts about the suspect that might give us clues to the motive. Was the accused teenager under some kind of stress? Did he have mental health problems? Were there “warning signs” that got overlooked?
Six weeks ago, Karmelo Anthony was brandishing an AK-47 and flashing gang signs, then the night before committing an atrocious murder, he posted a defiant photo to his Instagram account — so indeed, there were “warning signs” that got overlooked. But why do we have to rely on random X accounts to tell us these things? Why are the media so derelict in their journalistic duty? This is the real point, you see.
MSNBC isn’t calling this crime “a necessary lesson.” The media are not inviting us to engage in a discussion examining the social significance of this shocking murder. In case you were wondering — again, I must do the work the mainstream media won’t do — Frisco is about 30 miles north of Dallas. The town has boomed in the past 25 years, growing from a population of just 33,714 in 2000 to more than 225,000 now. The 2020 census found that the population of Frisco is 48% white, 26% Asian, 12% Hispanic and 9% black. It is a very prosperous community with excellent public schools, and therefore we must ask, why was Karmelo Anthony posing with an AK-47 on Instagram and flashing gang signs like he was some kind of ghetto hoodlum? Also, since we’re asking questions, this seems rather obvious: Why bring a knife to a track meet?
Good luck finding the answers to those questions in media coverage of this horrifying murder in Texas. Just try to keep in mind it is the gap between reality and media coverage that’s the real story. We wouldn’t be here if the media told the truth. What would Scott Adams say?
Last night’s linkagery came to naught since Boulder Station’s wifi network took offense to something about my laptop.
Next time I’ll just stay at the Cannery or the Stratosphere.
Meanwhile, the usual weekly deadlines are in effect for the usual weekend posts. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
Long drive to Las Vegas this afternoon. We’ll see if I have the energy to crank out the evening edition after I get there. Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.
When I first encountered the online buzz around the new Netflix series Adolescence, I didn’t have a strong reaction. Streaming services have replaced TV and movies as the primary pop culture sources of entertainment, but it’s been many years since I paid much attention to such things. My idea of “entertainment” is YouTube videos of Arkansas State Police doing PIT maneuvers — reality being far more interesting to me than the fictional product of some screenwriter’s imagination.
What I did know about Adolescence was that it is set in England, and that the screenwriters had essentially reversed the races of contemporary crime trends in the United Kingdom, by making a white boy the knife-wielding killer. Despite the news media’s reluctance to deal with this honestly, anyone who pays attention to crime news out of Britain knows who is implicated in the surge of stabbing sprees there. It’s not a secret.
In an English town, police break down the door of a family home and arrest Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old boy, on suspicion of murder of a classmate, Katie Leonard. Jamie is held at a police station for questioning, and then remanded in custody at a Secure Training Centre. Investigations at Jamie’s school, and questioning by a forensic psychologist, reveal that Jamie has been deeply disturbed by school bullying via social media centred on incel subculture.
How many actual murders in England have been inspired by “incel subculture” on social media? If it’s not zero, it’s pretty darned close. Which is to say, the plot of Adolescence is entirely fictional. No such teenage suspect as “Jamie Miller” has ever committed a murder in England with a motive like the one dramatized in this series.
Still, I had no intention of writing about Adolescence until Ed Driscoll at Instapundit linked to the tweet posted at the top, at which point I was like, “OMG! They’re treating this as if it were a documentary!”
Are you ready to go down this rabbit-hole with me? Because what I do — my value-added, as it were — is this kind of stuff, where I start researching, and following where the facts lead, until I can produce something close to the whole picture of a genuinely weird phenomenon, like this Netflix series that is a 180-degree mirror-reverse of reality.
Every so often, a television drama comes along that has the power to change things. . . .
And now we have Netflix’s Adolescence, which looks at the online radicalisation of young boys by men’s rights activists (MRAs) such as Andrew Tate. . . .
The issue of rising misogyny among young boys, fuelled by online influencers, has long been troubling. . . .
Its central character is a boy drawn into MRA culture, which eventually persuades him to kill — but he also comes from an ordinary family, with a loving father and many male role models around him. There is no trauma in his life, no abuse. As the writer, Jack Thorne, puts it: “He comes from a good background, like me; he’s a bright boy, like I was. The key difference between us? He had the internet to read at night whereas I had Terry Pratchett and Judy Blume.” . . .
Now I’ve highlighted just these few sentences for a reason. First, to point out how journalists are presenting this fictional series as dramatizing a real problem, “the online radicalisation of young boys by men’s rights activists (MRAs).” Well, how big of a problem is this? Or, more to the point, how many 13-year-old murderers have been inspired by MRAs?
The second point is to call attention to the show’s co-writer, Jack Thorne, with his insistence about the teenage killer, Jamie Miller, being a “bright boy” from “a good background.” Let’s dig a bit deeper on the subject of Jack Thorne and how this Netflix series came about.
Two and a half years ago, Stephen Graham phoned me up to ask if I was interested in writing a show about knife crime. He wanted to talk about young male violence towards women and he had two stipulations: he wanted to do it in a series of single shots, and he didn’t want to blame the parents.
I enthusiastically got involved and suggested we write together. At first, we didn’t know why Jamie, the perpetrator of the attack, did it. We knew he wasn’t a product of abuse or parental trauma. But we couldn’t figure out a motive. Then someone I work with, Mariella Johnson, said: “I think you should look into ‘incel’ culture.”
I expected to be confronted by anger and aggression; what I didn’t expect was to quickly grasp the attraction of the so-called “manosphere”. I knew almost immediately that if I was an isolated kid, I would find answers as to why I felt a bit lost. One of the central ideas — that 80% of women are attracted to 20% of men — would have made adolescent me sit up and, frankly, nod. The path then becomes: what do you do to upset that equation? How do you manipulate and harm in order to reset a female-dominated world that works against you? If you believe one part of the logic, the other half becomes conducive.
So, there’s the set-up — “young male violence towards women” in a situation where the young man is not from a bad family — and then the suggestion of “incel subculture” as the motive. Take a moment to contemplate the rarity of such cases in the real world. The most famous “incel” case was Elliot Rodger, which happened in 2014, and since then, how many similar cases have there been? Good luck finding a number larger than you can count on one hand. Also, notice the stipulation that the parents are blameless. Although we can’t say Elliot Rodger was “a product of abuse or parental trauma,” his parents were divorced, which is a common enough problem, although seldom does it result in children growing up to be homicidal maniacs. And it is simply wrong to depict Elliot Rodger as a monster created by the “manosophere.” Rodger posted a few times on a Reddit forum called “PUAhate,” i.e., devoted to criticizing “pickup artists,” but if you read his “manifesto,” it wasn’t like he was quoting anything by leading “manosophere” voices to justify his actions. He was just a loser who turned self-pity into rage.
It is usually a mistake to generalize from the example of psycho killers. For example, Lee Harvey Oswald was a Marxist and an assassin; should we start rounding up Marxists? Jeffrey Dahmer was a gay man and a murderous cannibal; should we start rounding up gays? Ted Kaczynski was a Harvard graduate and a terrorist bomber; should we start rounding up Harvard graduates? People who commit horrific crimes can be categorized any number of ways, but the key point is that very few people commit horrific crimes. There are probably quite a few gay Marxists at Harvard, none of whom are mass murderers.
The attempt to turn the deeds of a lone maniac into an example of an allegedly widespread trend is a sort of journalistic alchemy and, like so much of what’s wrong with journalism, it usually involves liberal bias.
Jamie’s story itself is not based on a specific person or event, but per Birmingham Live, Graham noted that real reports of knife crime did give him the idea for what the series would be about. “I’d read an article in the paper about a young boy stabbing a young girl, and it made me feel a bit cold,” he said. “Then about three of four months later, there was a piece on the news about a young boy who’d stabbed a young girl.” . . .
“And then it happened again, and it happened again, and it happened again,” he recalled. “I really just wanted to shine a light on it, and ask, ‘Why is this happening today? What’s going on? How have we come to this?’ ” . . .
Graham told The Hollywood Reporter that there is an “epidemic of knife crime amongst young, young lads … up and down the country.” According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of knife attacks in England and Wales has almost doubled in the past 10 years. Meanwhile, Ministry of Justice data for the year ending in March 2023 shows that 17.3% of the roughly 18,500 cautions and convictions made for possession of a knife or offensive weapon were offenders ages 10 to 17.
Here I will interject a point. After the 1996 Dunblaine massacre, the UK outlawed the private possession of almost all firearms, and it is rather amusing that they’re now in a tizzy over “knife crimes.” But note that the evidence offered of such an “epidemic” is the number of arrests for mere possession of a knife. In other words, the doubling of knife attacks is one thing, but they’re identifying minors as “offenders” merely for getting caught with “a knife or offensive weapon” without regard to whether they did anything with the aforesaid weapon. Of such stuff do journalists construct their “trend” stories. But now here’s the real payoff:
‘Where it came from, for me is there was an incident in Liverpool, a young girl, and she was stabbed to death by a young boy. I just thought, why?’ [Graham] told the Radio Times magazine.
‘Then there was another young girl in south London who was stabbed to death at a bus stop. And there was this thing up North, where that young girl Brianna Ghey was lured into the park by two teenagers, and they stabbed her. I just thought, what’s going on? What is this that’s happening?’
Before getting into specifics, the first point is that none of these crimes had anything to do with the “manosophere” or “incel subculture.”
On 25 November 2021, Ava and her friends, aged between 11 and 15 were playing and sharing alcohol near the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool while waiting for the switching on of the Christmas lights.
A teenage boy and his friends, aged between 13 and 15, started filming them with intent to share it on Snapchat. Ava asked them to stop and delete the recording. The unarmed girls ran towards the group of boys and the 14-year-old boy stabbed her in the neck with a knife, laughed, and ran away.
Because the boy was only 14, under UK law he can’t be publicly identified, but the death of Ava White had nothing to do with “incel subculture.” The lawyers for the boy tried to argue he acted in self-defense, and there is some indication the boy had a previous criminal history. For example, when he was asked why he wouldn’t tell police where his phone was, the boy answered: “Because they always take my phone. I have had a few phones took when I was in the police station.” On the night of the Ava White stabbing, the boy was arrested in Toxteth, a very rough neighborhood of Liverpool with a large immigrant population.
The second incident mentioned by Stephen Graham, the “young girl in south London who was stabbed to death at a bus stop,” was 15-year-old Elianne Andam, who was killed in September 2023. She was stabbed to death by her friend’s 17-year-old ex-boyfriend, Hassan Sentamu.
Hassan Sentamu (let), Elianne Andam (right)
Certainly this crime had nothing to do with “incel subculture” or online influences from the “manosphere,” and the killer didn’t come from the “ordinary” background of the Jamie Miller character in Adolescence.
The jury was told he was born in Uganda in 2006 and first came to live in London with his mother at about the age of three after allegations of domestic abuse against his father.
He had previously been referred to mental health services after staff at his primary school reported he was self-harming and he had pushed and slapped other children.
The Old Bailey heard that before joining that school Mr Sentamu had been sent by his mother to a Ugandan boarding school aged 11, where he reported he was physically abused and beaten with a metal pole.
He was later placed in foster care after a social worker found him home alone at the age of 12, and the court heard his mother told them “to take him away”.
His foster carer reported that he struggled to make friends and, when he did not get his own way, he had threatened to chop the cat’s tail off. . . .
The court also heard Mr Sentamu previously reported his mother had beaten him and tried to strangle him. She denied the allegations.
When he was 13, teachers had to disarm him after he took out a knife during a lesson and pointed it as his own chest, saying he wanted to kill himself.
He received a police caution for possession of a bladed article.
The jury was also told of other incidents, including Mr Sentamu threatening another child with a knife while on a residential trip because he felt he was mocking him, threatening to stab another student with scissors, and placing two girls in headlocks.
In July 2019, Mr Sentamu was assessed and diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
This kid had more red flags than a May Day parade in Beijing, and it was manifestly absurd for Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne to use such a case as inspiration for a story about “a boy drawn into MRA culture” who “comes from a good background.” And finally, we get to the third case Graham mentions, “this thing up North, where that young girl Brianna Ghey was lured into the park by two teenagers, and they stabbed her.”
What does this crime have to do with “incel subculture”? Nothing.
Scarlett Jenkinson (left) and Eddie Ratcliffe (right)
The murder of 16-year-old Brianna Ghey happened in Warrington, about 20 miles west of Manchester (“up North” in England, as Graham says) and was committed by Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe, both 15 at the time. Jenkinson and Ratcliffe had been friends since they were 11, and Jenkinson had befriended Ghey, who was transgender, having been born a boy named Brett Spooner. The prosecutor, Deanna Heer, told the court how Jenkinson and Ratcliffe planned the murder:
“The messages they exchanged show that they were preoccupied with violence, torture and death and record them discussing how they wanted to kill people they knew.
“If that was not an unusual way for two teenagers to speak to one another, the messages demonstrate how, over time, they encouraged one another to think about how they would actually carry out a killing.”
They spoke about murder as carelessly as if they were talking about their homework. Their possible targets extended beyond Brianna. In November 2022, the pair discussed killing a teenage boy, known as boy M, after Ratcliffe became worried he was getting too close to a girl he fancied. Jenkinson told him: “You can restrain him as I kill him so it’s easier.” In December, she confided that she had been watching videos of people being murdered and tortured on the dark web. Far from being shocked, the pair discussed whether potassium cyanide, sarin or ricin was a better way to kill someone.
In court, Jenkinson admitted enjoying “dark materials” online and said she often fantasised about murdering someone. She bonded with Ratcliffe, she said, over their “similar interests”. Brianna, who Jenkinson had become friends with after she complimented her eyeliner and who she hung out with after school, was first mentioned in their messages on December 15, 2022. Jenkinson sent a message to Ratcliffe, which read: “I’m obsessed over someone I know but don’t have feelings for them… She’s called Brianna… I don’t know how to explain. Also she has a [penis] lol”.”
Ratcliffe responded: “I don’t think you’re necessarily in love but I think you’re more curious and intrigued by its unnatural nature.” . . . Jenkinson wrote out a plan. On February 3, 10 days before the murder, she sent a photo of it to the boy. It was headed: “Saturday 11 February 2023. Victim: Brianna Ghey.”
After they were arrested for the murder, both Jenkinson and Ratcliff were diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, but as for “incel subculture” or the “manosphere” — nope, not a factor at all. In other words, Graham was 0-for-3 in terms of finding a stabbing that remotely resembled the plot of Adolescence, with a perpetrator anything like “Jamie Miller.”
That’s the Daily Mail headline about British schools adding this TV show to their curriculum — for real, not kidding — despite the fact that the show is about a problem that doesn’t exist. No crime with such a motive (“incel subculture” and the online “manosphere”) has ever been committed by a teenager in England, and yet no journalist in England seems capable of doing the research necessary to point this out.
Rollo Tomassi, who is arguably the most influential activist in the “manosphere,” isn’t telling boys to stab girls. He’s not advocating any kind of violence at all. There are men who have read Rollo’s book The Rational Male who swear that it literally saved their lives. Why is it that none of the journalists in England raving about Adolescence and its allegedly powerful lessons have bothered to interview Rollo?
We are witnessing a psyop. People need to wake the hell up.
The Republican candidates have prevailed in a pair of special congressional elections in Florida Tuesday, NBC News projects, giving Republicans some more breathing room as they navigate a narrow House majority.
NBC News projects that Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis has won the race in the 1st District to replace former GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, while Republican state Sen. Randy Fine won the 6th District race to replace former GOP Rep. Michael Waltz, who is now Trump’s national security adviser.
Fine was leading Democrat Josh Weil 54%-46% when the NBC News Decision Desk called the race with 73% of the expected vote in. In three counties where nearly all of the expected vote is in, Fine was faring around 10 points worse than former GOP Rep. Michael Waltz in November, who resigned from the seat to serve as Trump’s national security adviser.
Patronis defeated Democrat Gay Valimont, a former activist with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America who lost to Gaetz in November.
The 6th District race was giving some Republicans heartburn, with Weil vastly outraising Fine and Fine slow to launch TV ads. President Donald Trump carried the district, which includes Daytona Beach, by 30 points in November, but outside Republican groups hit the airwaves in the final days as the race appeared to be competitive. . . .
Valimont significantly outraised Patronis, which he acknowledged created “a lot of anxiety” in his race.
But the fundraising gap was even wider in the slightly-less-Republican 6th District, which drove Republican concerns about Fine’s prospects.
Weil, a public school teacher who had raised more than $10 million as of March 31 according to recent fundraising reports, had leveraged his strong fundraising to launch attacks against Fine on potential GOP-led cuts to entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicaid, in a district where nearly 30% of the population is over the age of 65.
There was never any realistic prospect that Democrats could win either of these seats, but they hyped up their base and unloaded vast sums of campaign cash given by liberal donors who, as always, have more money than sense. So they’ve gotten their hearts broken again, and now we wait for results from Wisconsin, which should be very close.
UPDATE 9:15 p.m. ET: Polls just closed in Wisconsin and we should start getting results soon there. Meanwhile, I checked the Florida results and, in the 6th District, with 99% of the vote counted, Randy Fine won by 14 points, 56.7% to Josh Weil’s 42.7%. In the 1st District, with 98% of the vote counted, Jimmy Patronis won by a margin of nearly 15 points, 57% to 42.2.% for Gay Vallimont. So, after all that media hype — the backlash against Trump! — it was a walkover in both districts.
Meanwhile, Smitty asks the obvious question:
But will WI finish counting votes in time for the mid-terms?
— I Came; I Saw; I Got Over Macho Grande (@smitty_one_each) April 2, 2025
UPDATE 9:30 p.m. ET: With 15% of the vote counted in Wisconsin, liberal Susan Crawford leads by about 35,000 votes, with 54.8% to Brad Schimel’s 45.2%.
UPDATE 9:50 p.m. ET: The vote-counting is actually going pretty rapidly in Wisconsin, and it’s not looking good for our guy Brad Schimel. With 38% of the vote counted, Crawford leads by a margin of about 140,000 votes, with 57.8% to Schimel’s 42.2%.
So I was going to do a joke about the site being sold to Huffington Post, but I’m still fighting this infection, plus :effort:
More seriously, I’m getting a flood of links and Substackery every weekend, to the point where Monday’s linkagery gets to be a real slog. How do people feel about a Sunday edition? Lump it together with Rule 5 Sunday? Do you want to know more?
Also, it’s election day in Florida and Wisconsin. Get out and vote! Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.
Pretty sure this cute blonde lass is courtesy of Rule5Texan. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt. ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule Five NPR Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon.
