The Anti-Feminist Component of Lone Wolf Terrorism: Connecting Incels to the Far Right

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject Politics - General and Theories of International Politics, grade: 1,0, University of Cologne, language: English, abstract: The aim of this paper is to highlight the misogyny of the extreme right and examine the online spaces in which lone wolves radicalize themselves. In particular the ¿Incel¿ movement which has gained notoriety in recent years with multiple domestic terrorist attacks, many of them targeted toward women, across the world. The goal is to show that alt-right and Incel ideologies often go hand in hand. There is a misogynist and an anti-feminist agenda that runs like a red thread through the manifests of extreme right attackers and still, there is almost no public discussion addressing it. Since the intent of this paper is to show connections between extreme right and Incel ideologies we will first make sense of the Incel movement as a whole and the so called ¿Manosphere¿. Subsequently, we will examine the similar characteristics of the Incel and extreme right world view, and have a look at three case studies of recent domestic terrorist attacks, examine their motive, their underlining ideologies and discuss whether its perpetrators can be ascribed to both the extreme right and the Incel community.