Misogyny, White Supremacy and the Blueprints for Mass Shootings
Ammunition cartridges of the gunman who attacked a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019
This is the second article in a two-part series about the intersections of masculinity and mass shootings. Read the first article: What We Know About Boys and School Shootings.
Trigger warning: gun violence
I started researching gun violence after 13-year-old Rehan described the Québec City mosque shooting while recording an episode of Breaking the Boy Code podcast.
“I remember when it happened,” he said. “That night, I actually started crying because I was like, ‘What if that ever happened to me?’ And I still don’t know what I would do…if I would just leave the prayer, which is like, really bad. Or if I would keep on praying and pray to God, please don’t make me die.”
Read more: A Breaking the Boy Code article delves deeper into Rehan’s story: “Inside, I Really Feel Hurt”.
I couldn’t listen to a young Muslim teenager describe the scariness of prayer in the face of an assault rifle without looking for the connections between mass shootings and white supremacy.
What I found was startling.
Outliers aside, mass shootings take place within a web of conspiracy-rich sexist and racist ideologies that are propelled by the anonymous radicalization and copycat reverence found within internet subcultures.
The violence of mass shootings has to be viewed through the lens of intersectionality.
The Québec City mosque shooting happened on January 29, 2017.
One week before the attack, the shooter typed into YouTube: ‘Polytechnique all shooting scenes,’ as he repeatedly searched for information on the infamous anti-feminist mass shooting perpetrated in 1989. Two years after Québec, the gunman who attacked a mosque in Christchurch painted references to his motivations for the attack all over his weapons equipment. The name of the Québec City mosque shooter was emblazoned on one of his ammunition cartridges.
This is just one example of the sexist and racist links that chain towards extremist violence. Misogyny is a powerful undercurrent in alt-right and white supremacist groups.
Incels, MRAs and white supremacists all share a sense of resentment—what sociologist Michael Kimmel refers to as aggrieved entitlement—that is reinforced by the social pressures of masculinity and the echo chamber of radicalized peers in online spaces.
A visualisation of the documented references between high-profile mass shooters
At the mild end, aggrieved entitlement lays the foundation for schoolyard violence. When it’s taken to an extreme, it spills over into hate crimes and shootings motivated by Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, and forms the ideological bridge that has become increasingly reified between the anti-feminist and white supremacist backlash of recent years.
The Polytechnique shooter was not the last of his kind, as researcher Mélissa Blais put it—far more the opposite.
“There’s no doubt that if Lépine existed at the same time as online hate groups and YouTube extremism, he would have used the internet to feed and shape his ideology and plan the shooting. The only difference now is that he would have live-streamed it.”
Online spaces provide the blueprints for extremism.
In order to better understand the undercurrents of mass shootings, I created a visualization of the documented references between high-profile perpetrators. When I zoomed out and looked at it, I was struck by the significant gap between the isolated École Polytechnique shooting and the interconnected web that we are seeing now.
The only possible explanation I can come up with is the arrival of the internet.
Simply put, the internet has become a hotbed for inspiring these attacks.
Delve deeper: We expand on this research in our online course, Making Sense of Senseless Violence.
Social platforms like Reddit and 4chan provided the early foundation for the network of ideologies now known as the manosphere. Crackdowns pushed misogynistic groups onto more extreme sites like 8chan and Gab, where they are now avoiding moderation and becoming increasingly toxic. The aggrieved and conspiracy-laden vocabulary of these insular networks is defined by men who feel like they are owed sex from women, targeted by feminism, and the only ones who see the world as it truly is (hence the ‘red pill’ analogy from The Matrix).
Instead of culture, writes journalist Stephen Marche, the manosphere offers boys contempt. Instead of education, outrage.
““In the hours upon hours I spent wandering this online neighbourhood, I saw mostly feral boys wandering the digital ruins of exploded masculinity, howling their misery, concocting vast nonsense about women, and craving the tiniest crumb of self-confidence and fellow-feeling.”
In doing so, they built a gateway to the far right. Anti-feminist rhetoric is a pipeline to violent white nationalism, and it is calculated to appeal to the demographic overwhelmingly responsible for mass shootings: young white men.
“Misogyny is used predominantly as the first outreach mechanism. ‘You were owed something, or your life should have been X, but because of the ridiculous things feminists are doing, you can’t access it.’ Once you engage with the idea that the feminist movement has increased the precarity of men, that moves over time into the increased precarity and endangerment of ‘the West.’”
The Québec City massacre was motivated by The Great Replacement conspiracy theory. For the Christchurch shooter, the threat came from Muslims; in El Paso, it was Hispanic immigrants.
The common thread is the online spaces they shared.
Many of the anonymous boys and men in the darkest corners of the manosphere promote copycat killings, revere mass shooters whose names I won’t repeat here—and circulate their manifestos of violence.
The thing is, this is only happening with boys and men.
Read more: Past Learnings & Unlearnings article, Helping Boys Safely Navigate Online Relationships.
“Violence is the final link in the chain that begins with disconnection.”
Boys can resurface from a culture of violence.
In the aftermath of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Michael Ian Black wrote an op-ed in The New York Times. “We will probably never understand why any one young man decides to end the lives of others,” he said. “But we can see at least one pattern and that pattern is glaringly obvious. It’s boys.”
Yes, boys are wading through a powerful undercurrent of sexist and racist violence. But to focus solely on those who have become so immersed in toxicity that they are swept away in its violence is a mistake.
We need to focus on why boys are there in the first place. According to masculinity theorist Jackson Katz, it’s not really the ideology that draws boys and young men into the alt-right, it’s a feeling of belonging.
“To counteract the seductiveness of that appeal from the right, we need to offer them a better definition of strength: that true strength resides in respecting and lifting up others, not seeking to dominate them.”
We need to focus on the current itself. The headwaters of violence are in and among boys’ relationships, and whether they are held and known by caring, positive role models and peers, or left feeling isolated and misunderstood by the natural supports they should be able to rely on.
We need to empower boys to stand their ground, to detoxify the water around them, and build bridges to other possibilities for who they are going to be as young men. Boys are the primary perpetrators of extremist violence, but they are also the best chance of stopping violence before it happens.
“Never underestimate the power of listening to boys, knowing them, and standing by while they navigate the rough waters of boyhood. Behind every boy who avoids being swept away in the current is someone who holds him—and believes in his ability to hold his own.”
Rehan was 10 years old when the Québec City mosque shooting happened. He’s a teenager now. As an Ahmadi Muslim, he participates in prayers, holidays and ijtima gatherings at his local mosque. He’s grown taller since we recorded a podcast episode after one of Next Gen Men’s after-school programs.
He’s still working on making the world a better place.
While this has been a story laden with violence, it’s also a story led by the clear voice of an optimistic now 13-year-old who is aware of social issues around him, brave enough to stand up for others, and early on his journey towards becoming a young man.
While we absolutely need to look at extremist violence with our eyes wide open to the insidious allure of misogyny and white supremacy, we can’t lose sight of those who will break the cycle of violence.
The next generation of men.