Reddit Bans Fringe Anti-Humanity Group After Assault on Palm Springs IVF Clinic

An explosion exterior a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California, killed one particular person and injured 4 others Saturday morning in what the FBI has known as an act of terrorism. The suspect within the bombing, 25-year-old Man Edward Bartkus, was the lone demise from the blast, and it appears obvious he held anti-human views. Now Reddit has banned a subreddit tied to the suspect’s ideology.

Bartkus is believed to be the one who detonated a bomb on the Palm Springs American Reproductive Middle, which provides providers like IVF, as a result of he was aligned with the pro-mortalist and anti-natalist actions—the concept people shouldn’t proceed to procreate. Bartkus seems to have been posting to varied subreddits, together with r/Efilism, which advocated for violence. Reddit has now banned r/Efilism for violating its phrases of service.

“Violence has no place on Reddit,” a spokesperson for the platform informed Gizmodo over e mail. “Our sitewide guidelines strictly prohibit any content material that encourages, glorifies, incites, or requires violence. Consistent with these guidelines, we’re eradicating any cases of the suspect’s manifesto or recordings and hashing to stop reupload. We’re additionally intently monitoring the communities on our platform to make sure compliance with our guidelines.”

Proponents of Efilism (the phrase “life” spelled backwards) are sometimes often known as anti-natalists, which is a extra widespread identify for the ideology, although Bartkus described himself as pro-mortalist in his 30-minute audio manifesto. Anti-natalism is a philosophy that advocates for individuals to not procreate, whereas pro-mortalists transcend these anti-natalist concepts to advocate for demise in all varieties beneath the speculation that as a result of life is struggling it’s moral to finish your individual life and even these round you within the course of.

Bartkus posted an audio file to his web site explaining why he was concentrating on the clinic, stuffed with logical inconsistencies and basic incoherence. Bartkus stated he wished to start “sterilizing this planet of the illness of life,” however talked about the current suicide of his greatest pal affecting him deeply. Bartkus wrote on his private web site, “It’s simply an excessive amount of of a loss when there’s no person else you actually relate to considerably.” He was clearly fighting private points past no matter philosophy to which he was supposedly swearing allegiance. That web site has now been taken offline.

There are different anti-natalist boards past r/Efilism on Reddit that haven’t been banned and a few, like r/circlesnip—which features a description reading, “The Vegan Antinatalist Circlejerk”—put out statements denouncing the assault on the IVF clinic.

“It has come to my consideration that the person answerable for at present’s bombing in Palm Springs
namedropped our communities of their suicide word. Although they struggled with private grief and
psychological well being points, their act of terrorism was unjustifiable, incoherent, immoral, and disgusting,” the statement reads.

The moderator went on to say that their model of anti-natalism is “explicitly one in every of non-violence” and stated that it ought to be as much as every particular person to “make their very own reproductive choices.”

“The philosophy we signify is explicitly one in every of non-violence,” the moderator continued. “We imagine it’s as much as every particular person to make their very own reproductive choices. We hope that the Palm Springs American Reproductive Middle can rebuild and resume operations.”

Different anti-natalist subreddits run by the identical moderator, r/Vystopia and r/antinatalism, posted the identical assertion condemning violence. The r/Efilism subreddit had about 12,000 members earlier than it was banned, in keeping with The Independent, which is definitely not massive by Reddit requirements. The largest communities on Reddit have tens of thousands and thousands of members.

The time period Elifism was reportedly coined by a fringe YouTuber named Gary Inmendham, who Bartkus mentions by identify in his audio manifesto. Inmendham posted a video after the bombing saying that Bartkus had achieved one thing “actually silly, dumb, pointless, and even show-offy,” referring to it as a “dumbass act of violence.” Inmendham stated that he’s even “in opposition to protesters” so he’s “clearly in opposition to terrorists.”

Bartkus, who sounds deeply insecure about his philosophy in his audio manifesto, stated that he was pushed to commit the bombing as a result of he couldn’t discover individuals to attach with on-line to debate issues anymore as a result of areas like YouTube and X have been being censored of anti-natalist content material. Bartkus additionally insisted that whereas the web is being “manipulated,” he was proof against the manipulation.

Bartkus additionally stated within the recording that he was a vegan and appear fixated on the welfare of animals, referring in his audio recording to “animals raped on farms,” however then happening to say that nature itself was horrifying in a method that even surpassed the struggling attributable to people. All life was struggling that wanted to finish, in his e-book.

A YouTube account related to Bartkus, which is now offline, reportedly contained explosions assessments, in keeping with ABC News. The scale of the Palm Springs blast was appreciable, stretching about 250 yards, with Akil Davis, assistant director on the FBI’s Los Angeles Subject Workplace, describing it to NPR as, “most likely the most important bombing scene that we’ve had in Southern California.”

The FBI launched a report last month about Nihilist Violent Extremists (NVE), although the definition is so unfastened that it may be utilized fairly broadly to every kind of ideologies. On this case, nevertheless, nihilism does appear to suit properly as a descriptor for a philosophy grounded in destroying all of humanity for nebulous ends.