Yiannopoulos was also a key political influencer and Trump advocate during the 2016 presidential elections who helped push Red Pill rhetoric into the mainstream electoral discourse.
He encouraged Trump fans to support the Red Pill film by claiming its ideas were anti-establishment and at risk of censorship – a key concern for Trump supporters who claimed they were being silenced by political correctness and the ‘feminisation’ of US politics.
Red Pill rhetoric goes mainstream
Since then, Red Pill rhetoric has become increasingly mainstream Dignam told us that it “has infiltrated several high profile celebrities, with Kanye West and Pewdiepie tweeting links to YouTubers who are also Red Pillers”.
In March 2019, Donald Trump Jr also praised the Red Pill forum as providing a space for conservatives to “express themselves”.
Dignam and Rohlinger are clear that we cannot attribute Trump’s 2016 election victory solely to his support from Red Pillers.
However, they argue that the fast and effective politicisation of the forum’s users shows how “extreme online enclaves” can help “candidates holding distasteful views to get elected”. It also “indicates that extreme misogynistic discourse can successfully create political action in the modern age”, they say.
With the next US election only a year away, will this politicisation of alt-right, anti-feminist Red Pillers be repeated?
In the run-up to the 2016 elections, some pundits predicted that Trump’s brand of misogynistic discourse would cost him the presidency. In contrast, the academics’ research shows that it may have actually helped him get into the White House.
The existence of people who can – and now have experience of – rallying “organised political opposition based on misogyny” is, said Dignam, “definitely something that [Democratic] activists should be taking into account in 2020”.
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