The shooting in Montreal that killed a police officer, an innocent civilian, and an aggrieved man from Alberta occurred outside the headquarters of Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, one of the world's most popular pornography websites. Police have not officially confirmed the target, but the address matches and the shooter's manifesto explicitly states that porn companies were legitimate targets.
Shooter's background and manifesto
Seth Hatfield, an honours student pursuing a graduate degree in philosophy at the University of Lethbridge, left behind a manifesto expressing anger at the world. He criticized capitalism, hated Jews and Zionists—calling them legitimate targets—and included pornography companies on his list of acceptable attack sites.
Hatfield wrote: "Large pornographic industry conferences, the headquarters of international pornography companies, and prominent individuals who are pornographic actors or actresses themselves, and who are very wealthy, and actively promote pornography to the public."
Comparison to drug dealers
In another part of the manifesto, he equated porn companies to drug dealers. "Porn companies themselves are just as bad, if not worse than drug dealers are, for the porn company effectively acts as both a drug manufacturer, and a drug dealer, while the 'drug' that they proliferate is just as harmful and even more ubiquitous than actual drugs are," he wrote.
He called for strict government controls on pornography, social media, and the internet: "Pornography and dating apps should obviously be abolished, and social media should probably be abolished as well, or at the very least it must be heavily altered into a restricted form that works with a harmonious and healthy society."
Wider grievances
Hatfield declared that "western governments are merely puppet entities, whose primary function is to preserve bourgeois dominance" while also railing against Jewish and Zionist influence on the elite. He also took issue with women, modern relationships, capitalism, plastic surgeons, microplastics, environmental destruction from oil, logging, agriculture, and what he called "fur farmers."
He encouraged readers to arm themselves and select targets including "Elite politicians and their cronies, both 'liberal' and 'conservative'; as well as powerful generals, leading military figures, influential Zionists, and war hawks. The headquarters of all corporations with ties to Zionism are fair game: IBM, Microsoft, Boeing, etc."
Incoherent ideology
Despite being a philosophy graduate student, Hatfield's manifesto lacked coherent political philosophy. He praised communist countries like China, Laos, Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba for lacking consumerism culture, and praised China's swift justice. He also praised Karl Marx and other far-left figures.
According to Brian Lilley of Postmedia, "This was not, as some media outlets have tried to claim, a clear manifesto from a violent extremist on the far-right." In the end, those asking why a man from Lethbridge drove across Canada to open fire on innocent people will only have one answer: he didn't like pornography.
