In the run-up to the 2016 US election, the Red Pill subreddit, an online group of men’s rights activists, became increasingly politicised, helping to catapult the ‘alpha male’ Trump into the White House. Once in power, Trump met his voters’ male supremacist demands by weakening protections against domestic abuse and sexual violence, and appointed a Supreme Court that would ultimately end the right to nationwide safe, legal abortion.
But the Red Pill is not the only online subculture to bring together violent misogyny, conspiracy theories, and far-right beliefs that dreamed of pure male entitlement and an end to women’s rights. Perhaps the most extreme example is the incel group – another forum that started on Reddit and now flourishes on other platforms such as incel.net and incel.is.
Incel stands for involuntary celibates: a group of men and boys who feel sexually rejected by women and who are very angry about it. The subcultures’ violent fantasies have spilled out into real-life terror, with extremists driving vans into cafes, shooting men and women in California, murdering Asian sex workers in massage parlours, and stabbing people to death in Plymouth, UK.
