Chuck Holton
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Chuck Holton is an American war correspondent, published author, and motivational speaker.
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INCELs Strike Again

Old Problem, New Threat

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:28

They call themselves INCELS, or “Involuntary celibates — young men depressed by their inability to get a girlfriend. This is not a new phenomenon…after all, men have lamented their inability to snag a mate since time immemorial. When I was in school, the inability to hook up with a member of the opposite sex was probably the norm, not the exception. I guess most of us could have called ourselves “INCELS” at one time or another.

From H. Michael Karshis
But now something’s changed. The internet allows many of these guys to turn to pornography and violent video games to soothe their frustration. So much time online takes them deep into a toxic mix of loneliness and isolation.

Jared Reed is an Associate Pastor at Granite Hills Baptist Church in Reno, Nevada. When I sat down with him to discuss this issue, he said very directly, “Look, this is a problem across the country, but I believe our area is especially bad. We have so many young guys who are addicted to porn, video games, and social media. It is undoubtedly a form of slavery.”

“We’re not talking about a fun thing to do with somebody physically sitting next to you for a few minutes on a rainy afternoon,” He continued. “We’re talking about weeks poured into an immersive environment, and at a very high cost.” Reed went on to relate a story of one man who was spending as much of his limited income on video games every month as he was on rent. That’s a problem.

Young men are increasingly hanging out with friends in the virtual world via massive multiplayer online games more than they are spending time with people in the real world, “meatspace,” as some call it. Online, they can form teams, explore and conquer worlds, shoot bad guys, pilot or parachute from planes, all without leaving the well-padded, air-conditioned comfort of their bedrooms.

The Author at age ~10
When I was a kid we’d go exploring, conquering, fighting and such too. We called it “playing outside.” Believe me, the graphics were incredible. Zero-latency.

But today’s young men are not allowed to do that, even if they wanted to. A report investigating the relationship between exposure to nature and mental health1 found that the average distance a young man is allowed to roam from his home unsupervised in 2020 is only about 300 yards. Most Americans spend 93% of their time indoors! Contrast that to my grandfather’s generation, which according to this report spent more time outdoors than in, walked most everywhere and roamed up to six miles away from home unsupervised.

When I was a kid, I rode my bike everywhere. It was about four miles to our church and a little more to my best friend Shane’s house. Between going to school, doing my paper route, and visiting friends I easily racked up ten miles a day or more on my old BMX.

Today’s kids are barely allowed to leave their front lawn. Many parents would say that’s because of the threat of abduction. Some whack job or pervert is likely to grab their kid off the street and murder him. Only that’s not borne out by the data. According to a report from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, of the 73.9 million children in America, only about a hundred of those are kidnapped each year by someone unknown to them. Ninety-three percent of those are eventually returned alive to their families. That means a kid in America today has a 0.00000014 chance of being kidnapped and murdered by some rando while out playing unsupervised. A kid is 1,600 times more likely to drown than be abducted.

But the mere perception of danger is enough for many American parents to treat their kids like useless toy poodles and keep them indoors, drive them anywhere they need to go, and as a result, make them much more likely to be obese, isolated, and antisocial.

Human beings were created for physical touch. We thrive on it. From breastfeeding to kissing to handshakes to wrestling to the very act of procreation, we are hard-wired to need human touch. Babies who are not held and cuddled often fail to thrive. Marriages fail, too, when there is no intimacy. Everyone needs touch.

But INCELS very often live their lives devoid of physical interaction of any kind. Their lives are spent online, connected to the entire world like never before but starving for love and physical affection. To make matters worse, they are almost universally addicted to porn, which cruelly forces them into the role of spectators to the most intimate of human touch, a constant reminder of what they don’t have. This creates in them a profound level of anger and self-loathing.

22-year-old self-described INCEL (name withheld) went on a killing spree in Isla Vista, California in 2014 to punish women who would not go out with him.
They begin to resent the world of “normies,” those people they see at school or in town who appear to have everything. They begin to hate “Chads,” who personify men who are perhaps richer or more attractive than they are, and “Stacys,” the “shallow” women who partner with them.

These INCEL men end up congregating in online chat groups at places like 4chan, and sort of stew in their own juices. They complain to each other about the inability to find a partner, about how shallow women are, and convince each other that they have a right to the kind of circus-act sexual trysts they see in pornographic movies. And because their world doesn’t readily offer up those opportunities, they come to believe the world deserves to be punished.

This is where things get dangerous.

Mark Lundgren is a former FBI agent who has been tracking this phenomenon. As we discussed it one day, he told me, “INCELS are made up of mostly white younger men who have sort of descended into a dark place on the internet, an echo chamber that is reverberating with a toxic ideology. They don’t think anything’s going to change in the world. They are extremely nihilistic and believe society needs to be punished. It’s a movement we’re seeing rise up much more significantly than we have in the past.”

Indeed we are. The FBI has identified at least four active violence attacks and forty-five deaths in the past few years that have been carried out by men adhering to INCEL ideology.

In 2014, a man identifying with the INCEL movement killed six and injured fourteen in Isla Vista, California. Before going on his rampage, he wrote, “I’ve been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection, and unfulfilled desires all because girls have never been attracted to me.” He went on to say, “One day INCELS will realize their true strength and numbers, and will overthrow this oppressive feminist system. Start envisioning a world where WOMEN FEAR YOU.”

In 2015, a 26-year-old INCEL murdered nine people and wounded others before committing suicide at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. He, too, lamented his inability to get a girl.

In 2017, an INCEL killed two students at a high school in New Mexico before killing himself. Before the event, he wrote, “Work sucks, school sucks, life sucks. I just want out of this [expletive].”

The massacre of 17 high schoolers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, happened on Valentine’s Day, and not for no reason. The shooter has become the poster boy for many in the INCEL movement.

A mass shooting was thwarted in January 2019 in Provo, Utah, after a 27-year-old man posted the following on his social media account, “I’ve never had a girlfriend before and I’m still a virgin, this is why I’m planning on shooting up a public place soon and being the next mass shooter cause I’m ready to die and all the girls the [sic] turned me down is going to make it right by killings as many girls as I see.”

Aside from their obvious failures with women, how many of these guys do you think got zero hugs and pats on the back at home? How many of them would you think were heavily into violent video games? How many were addicted to online porn? If you guessed all of them, you’d be right.

But these kinds of addictions aren’t just the domain of unemployed losers who are one step from plunging over the brink. In our interview, Pastor Jared said, “Of the men I’ve counseled over the past five years, I cannot recall one for whom pornography isn’t a struggle. And we’re not just talking about young single men. I’ve counseled men from 17 to 75 who were struggling with porn addiction.”

Two young men from his church agreed to share their journey away from these addictions with me. Carson and Allen (not their real names) both struggled with video games and porn addiction.

Carson, age 37 and now married told me, “Video games definitely make you more reclusive, just by their nature, and made me less sociable. With pornography I’d say looking back it gave me unbelievably high expectations that no woman would be able to achieve.”

His buddy Austin, age 20 said of the games he used to play, “It’s all violence. And for me, a lot of those video games they make you angry. And you might play for a couple of hours and maybe you don’t win and you just…it just leaves me mad and it just kind of sets the tone for the rest of the day.”

This underscores why human interaction and especially human touch are so important. Mark Lundgren agreed. “Without community surrounding us,” he said, “We can go so deep into the internet, so isolated, so without hope, so dark and that I think can absolutely be a tool of strategic evil when it’s not checked.”

Jared agreed 100%. “The real change seems to happen when they are ready to get radical about dealing with this sin, putting it to death,” he said, paraphrasing Colossians 3:5. “Men who make the changes, who start to experience victory in this area, it’s a wonderful snowball.”

He’s right. Unlike Heracles and his new pet Cerberus, it’s not enough to try to chain up your hidden sins. A man of prowess must go all in. He must tear out and throw into the fire those things that cause him to give in. He must hunt down his weaknesses and kill them by embracing hardship in this life.

Fortunately, a man submitted to the Holy Spirit has help in this endeavor. Carson put it this way: “I gave my life to Christ, and I couldn’t do any of those things anymore. It completely purged me of my pornography addiction, my alcohol addiction, I completely lost interest in all my video games.”

Not every man will have such a black-and-white experience. I’ve been saved for decades and still struggle with besetting sins. Engaging the enemy of our own weakness is a daily battle every man must fight. In so doing, we will undoubtedly have a few setbacks now and then, but we never lose unless we stop fighting. The Apostle Paul knew what that was like, when he wrote, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7)

My book Prowess — The Man You Were Meant To Be is for those of us who are still in the fight. It’s a manual to help you learn how to win in very practical, down-to-earth ways. The book is primarily aimed at the young lions who often approach me after a speaking engagement with questions about how to do manhood right. But even if you aren’t a young lion, it’s good to remember the really important things now and then.

This article is an excerpt of the book “Prowess — The Man You Were Meant To Be” by Chuck Holton

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Upcoming Live Call with Chuck – Locals Members Only

This Saturday, September 20, at 1 PM EST, Chuck will be hosting a private live call exclusively for Locals members.

This is your chance to connect directly, ask questions, and hear what’s on his heart as he shares updates you won’t get anywhere else.

If you’re already part of the community, make sure to mark your calendar and join us. If not, now is the time — only Locals members will have access.

Join Locals here: https://chuckholton.locals.com/

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Clay Higgins Was Right

When I talked with Congressman Clay Higgins, he warned that America could lose its best cops — and that the nation would only have itself to blame.

Look at the news today: police departments are short-staffed, lowering standards, and begging for recruits. Even the FBI just dropped its degree requirement.

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Do you think we can turn this around — or is it already too late?

I have a few reflections on Chuck’s live from yesterday on YouTube.
1. When homosexuality was removed as a diagnosable disorder back in 1973 (same year that Roe v. Wade was passed.... coincidence???) that was a true Pandora’s box moment. This was done in response to the events of the Stonewall riots in NYC, where police raided a gay bar, and riots ensued. There was no scientific rationale whatsoever for removing the diagnosis. It was ALL a political move to appease. Period. Non-Heterosexual, non-monogamous sexual activity was unofficially normalized back then and it’s only accelerated with the passage of gay marriage. Our society has reduced sexual union to something that has no more significance or impact on their spirituality or mental health than something like bowling. (Hmmm what should I do tonight... go bowling or have sex with someone who’s willing?)
2. The more our nation moves away from Judeo Christian values, something that most certainly contributed to #1 above, the less we...

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Israel’s Gaza City Push, Media Spin, and a Surprising Jerusalem Moment

Israel has kicked off its heaviest push yet into Gaza City—after weeks of “shaping operations”—while also striking in Yemen and reportedly backing Druze fighters in southern Syria. At the same time, a ceremony beneath Jerusalem’s Old City—attended by Secretary of State Marco Rubio—lit up a very different front: history, faith, and narrative. Here’s the fast tour through what matters and why.

 

 The war just shifted gears

Over the last week Israel hammered Gaza City with air and artillery, flattening high-rises Hamas used as observation posts and command nodes. That was prelude. As of last night, IDF Merkava columns pushed in en masse with heavy air cover—what looks like the start of the full ground thrust many assumed began weeks ago.

What’s different now:

  • Tempo: From pin-point raids to multi-brigade advances.

  • Purpose: Clear and hold, not just attrit.

  • Civilians: Israel had urged evacuations for weeks; Hamas intimidated and manipulated many into staying as human shields.

 “Shaping” is over. The main act just walked onstage.

Israel also continues long-arm strikes into Yemen to blunt Houthi launches and interdiction attempts—reminding everyone this conflict has regional plumbing.

 

A northern wrinkle: Druze in southern Syria

Multiple reports say Israel is arming and paying several thousand Druze fighters in Syria’s Suwayda region. The likely aims:

  • carve a buffer against jihadi networks and Iranian proxies,

  • stabilize Druze communities adjacent to the Golan, and

  • pressure Damascus while U.S. political heat rises on the Assad regime.

If true, it’s classic Israeli realpolitik: empower local actors who can both hold terrain and deny sanctuaries to the worst people in the neighborhood.

 

 Hostages, threats, and hard truth

President Trump warned Hamas that using hostages as above-ground shields would mean “all bets are off.” Hamas has played the human shield card from day one, and as fighting tightens around Gaza City, the danger to the captives sadly increases, whether underground or in tents. Two sober realities:

  1. Hamas won’t voluntarily release all hostages;

  2. “Pressure camps” outside the PM’s residence don’t move Hamas—they help Hamas by showing internal Israeli division.

A miracle remains possible. Absent that, rescue and relentless pressure are the only paths that have ever worked on terror kidnappers.

 

 The “G-word” and how headlines get made

When a UN panel labeled Israel’s conduct “genocide,” many outlets headlined it as fait accompli: “Israel committing genocide in Gaza,” and only later added the “UN inquiry says” clause. That ordering isn’t accidental; it’s framing. The same pattern appears with the phrase “occupied Palestinian territory”—baked into the body names themselves, bias pre-installed.

A few counters you won’t see on those front pages:

  • Population reality: Gaza’s population grew for years; Israel has sent in food and medicine even while fighting.

  • 2005 withdrawal: Israel pulled out of Gaza entirely for nearly two decades.

  • Military necessity vs. malice: Collapsing tunnels and neutralizing rooftop fire isn’t the same as targeting civilians as civilians.

No one should be casual about civilian harm. But precision and intent matter—and so does honest language.

 Under the Old City: a tunnel, a text, and a statement

While rockets and headlines flew, another story unfolded under Jerusalem. Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined Israeli leaders to inaugurate a newly opened pilgrimage tunnel linking the City of David to the Western Wall—an archaeological artery that strengthens the historical case for an ancient Jewish Jerusalem.

The press called the event “extremist” because the City of David organization is settlement-friendly. Watch the speeches and you’ll hear… basic statements about history, law, and God’s promises. Whether you agree the temple stood on today’s Temple Mount or nearer the Gihon Springs, the archaeology keeps saying the quiet part out loud: the Jews didn’t arrive in 1948.

 Stones don’t tweet, but they do testify.

 

 The Gaza map keeps changing

The IDF’s own sequencing shows a slow squeeze: Rafah sealed and cleared, buffer zones bulldozed, then methodical bites northward. The carve-outs will likely remain. When a terror army embeds in apartments and alleys, the land you can live on shrinks until your militants stop using it as a launchpad. That’s cruel math—but it’s Hamas’s math.

 

 Quick answers to common questions

  • “Why doesn’t Israel just take Gaza in weeks?”
    Booby-trapped stairwells, IED belts, tunnel networks, and hostages make speed the enemy of success.

  • “Cut Gaza’s internet already.”
    It’s a live intelligence hose. Israel harvests signals and patterns from the traffic. Turning it off cuts both ways.

  • “Two-state solution?”
    The UN votes it like a spell. History says every concession to Hamas is treated as proof of weakness, not a path to peace.

  • “Arabs in Israel?”
    Roughly one in five Israeli citizens is Arab—voting, serving, studying, and running businesses inside Israel proper.

 

What to watch next

  1. Gaza City blocks: Expect grinding, building-to-building clearing with casualty spikes when tunnel nodes are found.

  2. Northern front: More rocket trades with Hezbollah; keep an eye on Mount Hermon / Golan movements.

  3. Damascus diplomacy: If Druze gains hold, watch for Assad-Israel rumblings about territory swaps and tacit understandings.

  4. Jerusalem narrative: The tunnel opening is just the start—archaeology will keep undermining convenient modern myths.

Bottom line

  • The kinetic phase in Gaza City has truly begun.

  • The information war remains as vicious as the street fight.

  • Under the streets, stones keep speaking—about covenant, continuity, and belonging.

  • And for families of hostages and soldiers, the stakes aren’t theoretical; they’re mortal.

Pray for the captives. Pray for wisdom in Israel’s war cabinet. Pray for justice without vengeance, strength without cruelty, and an end state that keeps evil from regenerating.

 

If you found this helpful

  • Share it with a friend who wants the quick, clear version without the spin.

  • Drop your questions in the comments; I’ll tackle as many as I can in the next live.

  • If you want more deep dives, documentaries, and field reporting, you can support the work at chuckholton.com—and check out details for our Armenia tour next June (history, mountains, and yes, a little “safety third” adventure).

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September 16, 2025
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From Tragedy to Turning: What Charlie Kirk’s Death Is Revealing About America

Wars rage in Israel and Ukraine; Russian drones probe NATO airspace; headlines churn. But there’s a deeper story we need to face right now: the assassination of Charlie Kirk—and the spiritual, cultural, and parental reckoning it’s triggering across America. It’s about what this moment is doing in our hearts, our homes, and our churches. And yes—it’s about how God can take what the enemy meant for evil and turn it toward good.

 

The Rot Beneath the Headlines

“I won’t repeat the shooter’s name. These homicidal narcissists don’t need more publicity.”

Authorities are probing whether extremist groups may have encouraged or helped the killer. I’ve covered Antifa and similar outfits for years; the appetite for political violence has been cultivated, trained, normalized. Even now, you can find groups posturing with rifles outside drag shows for kids—provocation wrapped in moral preening.

I’m a staunch Second Amendment guy. Disarming the law-abiding isn’t the answer. The answer is more sane, trained, moral citizens willing to protect their communities—and the courage to reject the false safety of making everyone more vulnerable.

As my friend Tim Miller said yesterday: “Stand up. Train up. Get prayed up.”

 

Parenting in an Age That Manufactures Meaninglessness

If we want to understand how a 22-year-old throws away his life to silence a speaker who advocates marriage, family, and the difference between men and women, we have to talk about the culture that formed him—and the homes that allowed it.

Three forces keep showing up:

1) Early, unsupervised screens

A computer in the bedroom at age 10 is not just “gaming.” It’s a portal. The stats on teen pornography exposure are brutal, and early exposure warps identity, intimacy, and moral imagination.

2) Addictive, isolating gaming

The WHO recognizes “gaming disorder” for a reason. Heavy gaming correlates with depression, anxiety, and disrupted sleep. Many of the most popular titles (think GTA) normalize virtual felonies and hyper-sexualized violence. They siphon off a young man’s God-given drive to build, conquer, and take real risks in the real world.

“We used to call it playing outside. Now the ‘adventure’ is a couch, a console, and an algorithm designed to keep you hooked.”
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September 13, 2025
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“Aftershocks at Home”

On a somber September 11—I went live to talk about something I wish I didn’t have to: the war we once fought “over there” is increasingly here, testing our communities, our churches, and our national character.

Two themes framed the conversation:

  1. The date itself. Twenty-four years after 9/11, we remember the 3,000 lives taken and the millions changed forever. Terror reshaped policy, travel, and how we see risk. The ripple effects were enormous—wars abroad, costs at home, and a reshaped culture.

  2. A country at a crossroads. When a prominent conservative Christian figure can be gunned down on an American campus in broad daylight (details still developing as authorities investigate), that should sober all of us. Half the nation mourns; too many on social media mock or celebrate. Whatever your politics, that’s a moral red flag.

Political violence isn’t hypothetical anymore. If we don’t face it and prepare—practically and spiritually—the chaos corroding our civilization will accelerate.

 

What’s really being attacked

The late Charlie Kirk often articulated the deeper conflict succinctly: a spiritual battle in which radical ideologies—Marxism and Islamism among them—seek to erode the American way of life that sprang from a Judeo-Christian worldview: family, local community, ordered liberty, public virtue, and the conviction that all people bear the image of God.

Why does that worldview cause such hatred? Consider five core claims of Christianity that run directly against the grain of anger-politics and power-religion:

  1. The primacy of love.
    “Love the Lord your God… and your neighbor as yourself.” Love, forgiveness, reconciliation—even of enemies—cuts against our culture’s appetite for vengeance and perpetual outrage.

  2. Inherent human dignity.
    Every person is made in God’s image (Gen. 1:27). That truth resists all dehumanization—of political opponents, of the unborn, of the elderly, of the foreigner. Tyrants and opportunists hate it because you can’t easily control people you’re required to treat as image-bearers.

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