The bombing of a Palm Springs fertility clinic on May 17, 2025, was inspired by an extreme “anti-life” ideology called “efilism,” invented by 65-year-old Gary Mosher, who posts hundreds of videos online.
Mosher’s videos, many with grotesque or disturbing imagry, advocate that human life is unethical and should be extinguished.
Guy Edward Bartkus, 25, who died in a massive car bomb explosion outside the American Reproductive Center, was a follower of Mosher’s and likewise called himself “anti-life.”
My investigation began less than two hours after the bombing and is still underway. The goal: Understand not only what happened but also the root causes of the attack.
Within 24 hours of the attack, the FBI confirmed that Guy Bartkus was the suspected bomber. But in an interview three days after the attack, his father told me: “Guy was a follower.”
Did someone or something else inspire Bartkus to carry out the attack? Answers began to surface when I uncovered a website linked to Bartkus.
“The end goal is for the truth (Efilism) to win,” Bartkus allegedly wrote on his website. “And once it does, we can finally begin the process of sterilizing this planet of the disease of life.”
Efilism was invented Mosher years ago – it’s a term he coined by spelling the word “life” backwards.
Mosher has promoted efilism in YouTube videos and a website using the handle, “Inmendham.” The handle refers to Mendham, a borough in New Jersey.
In an audio recording on Bartkus’s website, a person believed to be Bartkus says: “This life on earth game is really nasty… As Inmendham, Gary, would say, there is no carrot, only the whip.”
When I interviewed Bartkus’s father, he confirmed that the voice in the audio “sounds like Guy to me.”
Efilism is an extreme offshoot of anti-natalism. Anti-natalists believe that because human life involves suffering and babies don’t consent to being born, people should refrain from procreating and allow the population to decline.
But in promoting efilism, Mosher argues that a more extreme approach may be required. In a video entitled WTF #671, he 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.”
When I asked Mosher to comment on Bartkus’s alleged bombing of a fertility clinic in the name of “efilism,” Mosher sent me an email stating in part: “All causes have bad advocates.”
In a video entitled WTF #951, posted the day after the attack, Mosher complained that the bombing could undermine efilism.
“A guy named Guy, that’s all I knew him as,” said Mosher, “put the entire subject in jeopardy.”
Ten days after the attack, I asked the FBI whether Mosher is under investigation. Rukelt Dalberis, a Public Affairs Officer, responded: “Per longstanding DOJ policy, the FBI does not confirm nor deny the existence of investigations.”
