The deceased suspect in the bombing of a Palm Springs fertility clinic on May 17 espoused an “anti-life” ideology called “efilism” that was invented by Gary Mosher, a 65-year-old New Jersey man who has spent years promoting his views in hundreds of YouTube videos.
Guy Edward Bartkus, 25, who injured four bystanders and killed himself in a massive car bomb explosion outside the American Reproductive Center clinic, was a follower of Mosher’s, according to online writings and an audio recording reviewed by the Long Beach Post.
Mosher’s efilism belief system, derived from the word “life” spelled backwards, is a radical offshoot of anti-natalism.
Anti-natalists believe that, because human life involves suffering and babies can’t consent to being born, people should refrain from procreating and allow the population to decline.
But in YouTube videos promoting efilism, Mosher goes further.
In a video entitled WTF #671, Mosher declares: “You want to make something go extinct? You have to kill the generation.”
Later in the video, Mosher explains: “I’m not preferentially choosing, ‘oh let’s choose violence.’ No, I’m just saying that the fact is you’re not going to be able to make this omelet without breaking eggs.”
In another video Mosher declares: “I would kill a bitch if she tried to have my baby.”
Although Mosher and efilism weren’t well known prior to the bombing, his YouTube videos could garner thousands of views. His catalogue includes hundreds of recordings that stretch back decades.
Now, the Palm Springs attack has put a new focus on efilism, potentially spreading it to a new audience, according to extremism researcher Brian Levin.
This is also not the first time efilism has been linked to a real-world act of violence.
Last month, 27-year-old Sophie Tinney was found shot to death in her bed in Pierce County, Washington. Tinney’s boyfriend, Lars Eugene Nelson, 29, was charged with second-degree murder.
“The victim may have convinced the defendant to shoot her in the head while she was sleeping,” Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Dalton Smith told the Pierce County Superior Court.
Bartkus appears to have been close friends with Tinney.
His father told the Long Beach Post that his son visited Tinney in the weeks before her death, and on a website filled with Bartkus’ writings and an audio recording explaining his motivations for the Palm Springs bombing, he called Tinney his “best friend” and said, “I’ve never related so someone so much.”
A Tumblr account linked to Tinney described the account owner as an efilist, and in a TikTok video, a woman who appears to be Tinny talked admiringly about Mosher, referring to him as “Imendham,” the screen name he uses in his videos and on a website promoting efilism.
“If you’ve heard of Inmendham… a lot of people into anti-natalist philosophy are really big fanboys of him… Everything I have seen from him I’ve agreed profusely with,” the woman says.
‘Sterilizing this planet of the disease of life’
Online writings linked to Bartkus echoed Mosher’s ideology.
“The end goal is for the truth (Efilism) to win,” the author of a website being examined by the FBI wrote. “And once it does, we can finally begin the process of sterilizing this planet of the disease of life.”
The website includes an audio file explaining the motivations for the Palm Springs bombing. The Long Beach Post sought to verify the recording through Bartkus’ father, who said it sounds like his son.
In an audio, the author says, “This life on earth game is really nasty… As Inmendham, Gary, would say, there is no carrot, only the whip.”
When asked to comment on Bartkus’s alleged bombing of a fertility clinic in the name of efilism, Mosher wrote in an email to the Long Beach Post: “All causes have bad advocates.”
In a video entitled WTF #951, posted the day after the bombing, Mosher complained that the attack could undermine efilism.
“A guy named Guy, that’s all I knew him as,” said Mosher, “put the entire subject in jeopardy.”
Levin, who has studied many extremist movements as the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, took issue with Mosher’s attempts to distance himself from Bartkus’s actions.
“Like many self-absorbed radicalized propagandists, he glorifies the very acts that he avoids,” he said.
He called Mosher “a particularly vile lowest-common-denominator sophist on our rapidly unhinged internet.”
Mosher denied pushing people such as Tinney and Bartkus toward violence as a remedy for existential suffering, telling the Long Beach Post, “I do not encourage or incite any social violence.”
But in his video titled WTF #671, Mosher warned: “The end game will require some unpleasant activity. That’s just a fact. You can’t get around it.”
Elsewhere in the video, Mosher said: “I’m not advocating that that’s your first option, is to go whack everybody. Frankly, because I can’t do it.”
Professor Levin said, although he didn’t think efilism would ever go mainstream, “I am more concerned that it will now have greater accessibility to unstable young people, amplifying their suicidal ideations and possibly catapulting more of them toward self-inflicted death.”
Rukelt Dalberis, a Public Affairs Officer for the FBI, declined to say whether Mosher is under investigation in connection with the bombing, telling the Long Beach Post: “Per longstanding DOJ policy, the FBI does not confirm nor deny the existence of investigations.”
Doug Kari is an attorney and freelance investigative journalist, [email protected]