New research by US academics reveals how a controversial online forum for ‘men’s rights activists’ radicalised its members to back Trump in the 2016 US election.
Pierce Dignam and Deana Rohlinger at Florida State University analysed 1,762 posts left on the anti-feminist Reddit forum the Red Pill. In a new paper published this month, they describe how the forum abandoned its original apolitical stance in the run-up to the election and instead radicalised its members to support Trump’s candidacy.
The Red Pill forum was set up in 2012 by a Reddit user named “pk_atheist” – later revealed to be former Republican lawmaker Robert Fisher. Since then it has become one of the more notorious spaces in the “manosphere” – a loose online coalition of men’s rights activists (MRAs), ‘pick-up artists’ and other male supremacists.
