Florida Yoga Studio Shooting Suspect Was A Far-Right Misogynist

Scott Beierle, 40, ranted about the "collective treachery" of women on his YouTube page.
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The man who police say walked into a Tallahassee, Florida, yoga studio and opened fire on Friday evening was a self-identified misogynist who ranted against women and spewed racist beliefs in videos and songs posted online.

Tallahassee police say Scott Beierle, 40, shot six people, killing two of them, and struck another with his gun after posing as a patron of the studio. The women killed were Dr. Nancy Van Vessem, 61, and Maura Binkley, 21.

Some at the studio attempted to stop the shooter as he fired, police say.

Beierle posted several videos to a YouTube channel in 2014 that painted him as the victim of “treachery” by many of the “females” he has wanted to “court.”
BuzzFeed News was first to report on the shooter’s social media presence Saturday.

“Those who engage in treachery will ultimately be the victims of it,” Beierle said in a video titled “The Rebirth of My Misogynism.”

At other points, he names girls and women he has known since eighth grade, complaining about their “collective treachery” and saying they can “justify anything if you offend their sensibilities.”

Beierle lamented in a video titled “The Dangers of Diversity” what he viewed as the rise of “foreigners” in the U.S. and praised nations that maintain one “ethnic character.” In a video he dubbed “The American Whore,” Beierle said interracial relationships were “a betrayal of blood,” and that women in them have a mental illness.

It was unclear Saturday evening whether YouTube had suspended the account. Beierle also had a SoundCloud account that is still active. On it, he posted songs with lyrics describing violence against women, with one song, complaining about “the girl I can’t get in the sack,” posted just hours before the shooting.

The gunman took his own life at the yoga studio before police arrived. Police have yet to officially disclose a motive in Friday’s shooting.

Court records viewed by The Associated Press show that Beierle had previously been arrested for groping women from behind, and was once banned from Florida State University’s campus.

Through his videos, he appeared to identify as an “incel,” shorthand for “involuntarily celibate,” a misogynistic label used primarily on the internet to describe men who cannot convince women to have sex with them. In one video viewed by BuzzFeed, Beierle reportedly said he related to Elliot Rodger, the man who wrote a manifesto detailing his hatred of women before embarking on a shooting rampage in California, where he killed six people. In the “Misogynism” video, he spoke about a woman who kept canceling and rescheduling dates, saying he “could have ripped her head off.”

Beierle, a military veteran, also spoke angrily about the idea that women can press charges for his being “aggressive” in his pursuit of women, which he considered a typical “male characteristic.”

“Can I press charges for being evasive?” he asked.

Beierle also spoke of another series of women who turned down his invitation to a concert, acting as though he were entitled to romantic attention.

“I’m trying to live my life here. You’re not helping,” he said of the women.

The Tallahassee incident appears to be the second incel-related mass murder in 2018, after a man killed 10 people in Toronto by driving a van into a crowd in April.

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