MONTREAL — The gunman behind a deadly shootout in Montreal on Monday, which left three people dead—including a police officer, a civilian, and the suspect himself—left behind a detailed 104-page manifesto containing violent, extremist messages. The Quebec coroner’s office has officially identified the shooter as Seth Scott Hatfield, a 25-year-old from Lethbridge, Alberta. Investigators recovered the extensive document inside the suspect’s hotel room, which concludes with an explicit call for others to arm themselves and inflict mass violence upon perceived opponents.
The document, meticulously written in an essay style with academic-style citations, repeatedly references the downfall of the Western world and heavily espouses anti-women rhetoric aligned with the “incel” (involuntarily celibate) ideology. Criminologists analyzing the manifesto note that Hatfield clumsily attempted to intellectualize his actions and biological arguments to legitimize the extremist movement. The text outlines bizarre proposals to severely restrict women’s rights and replace them in the workforce with automated robots, driven by what experts describe as deep-rooted bitterness, isolation, and misogyny.
Beyond its fierce anti-women sentiments, the manifesto features an undercurrent of anti-capitalist ideology and vitriol directed at the bourgeois social class. Hatfield explicitly named specific groups and sectors he believed deserved dire consequences, including major real estate brokerages, private equity firms, health insurance CEOs, plastic surgeons, Zionism supporters, and those profiting from mass immigration. He also condemned video games and pornography for fueling loneliness among young men, while targeting cryptocurrency traders and proponents of Christianity as swindlers.
The manifesto also included chilling tactical ramblings on how to evade law enforcement during a mission and how to violently fight back if encountered. This discovery has heightened already elevated anxieties within Canadian law enforcement, coming at a time when four separate police officers have been killed or injured in less than two weeks across the country. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Quebec authorities have advised police forces nationwide to maintain extreme caution, while investigators continue to comb through Hatfield’s digital footprint, social media, and university background to piece together his exact trajectory.
