Projet Polytechnique: Say Never Again

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In this age of algorithms and disinformation, how can we fight violence against women? Projet Polytechnique addresses the issue.

Jean-Marc Dalphond is, with fellow actor Marie-Joanne Boucher, the author and driving force behind the Projet Polytechnique podcast and subsequent theatre piece. He describes the stages of their investigatory process.

On December 6, 2018, comedian Jean-Marc Dalphond published on Twitter a tribute to the 14 victims of the Polytechnique tragedy, including his cousin Anne-Marie Edward. He also quotes comedian Marie-Joanne Boucher, who posted a text on Facebook about the need to pass on values to boys that will prevent similar massacres. But the posting provoked an outpouring of hateful comments, and the two comedians, who until then had been only vague acquaintances, decided to team up to create a documentary play to better understand what had happened – and what was still happening.

Dalphond personally infiltrated masculinist networks for almost two years, to witness the difference between a community of support and a community of hate. “This vigil has been very hard to bear,” he says. The anti-feminist family includes professional seducers who use women (pick-up artists), “men who go their own way” and despise women (MGTOWs). Then there are the so-called incels (involuntary celibates)—such as Alek Minassian, the Torontonian who self-identified as incel and in 2018, as payback for those who wouldn’t have sex with him, drove a rented van into a crowd of people, killing 11.

Extreme right-wing vigilantes, back-to-kitchen activists and fathers’-rights groups complete the picture. Incels blame dating apps’ algorithms for rejecting them on the grounds that they are not the alpha-male type. “They share radicalization processes, which are similar to those of the ultra-religious: the mass-murderer Marc Lépine has been transformed into a prophet, Alek Minassian into an apostle, and there are others,” says Dalphond. Studies show that people who currently identify with incels are between 13 and 22 years old. “How can you hate women at 13 because you’re still a virgin?”

Jean-Marc Dalphond a personnellement infiltré des réseaux masculinistes pendant presque deux ans, pour documenter Projet Polytechnique. Crédit photo : Guillaume Boucher

Work of memory

Projet Polytechnique is a work of memory and education; Dalphond and Boucher act as artists and awareness raisers. “To those who think education is expensive, try ignorance,” he says, adding one could say that, for example, “to parents who were horrified to learn that their children were following, like a billion people, former influencer, pimp and enslaver Andrew Tate.”

École Polytechnique’s vice-rector at the time, who had never spoken publicly about the event, agreed to give his testimony for the first time. “He wept like a child, cursing himself for having seen Marc Lépine pass by with a big bag without actually stopping him,” says Dalphond. The Polytechnique slaughter was the first mass killing inside a school in North America. “Ten years before Columbine, no one could have possibly anticipated what was about to happen.”

Why go see Projet Polytechnique when Ukraine and Gaza are on fire? Because, despite the heaviness of the subject, the show is full of hope: “Hatred of women and hatred of the Jewish community are two seeds of the same hatred, and if we give ourselves the collective strength, to quote Manon Massé, we can say never again,” says Dalphond,