Violence, racism and antisemitism – it all starts with women

The revelation that a close associate of Andrew Tate is working to recruit Australian teens to the neo-Nazi group National Socialist Network is the latest example of how rising misogyny is fuelling radicalisation and recruitment to the extreme right.

Tate is a self-described misogynist and online influencer who has faced multiple charges of rape and human trafficking and runs dating academy seminars that teach tactics to degrade and manipulate women. He has compared women to dogs, advocates for their physical abuse as a mechanism of control, and says he believes that they shouldn’t drive or work outside the home.

It is hard to overstate Tate’s popularity with boys and young men. In 2023, a third of Australian boys reported they admire Tate, while about one in five young men in the UK and in the US view him favourably. Tate amassed millions of followers on social media – mostly teenage boys and young men – before being banned from Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.

Tate’s right-hand man Stirling Cooper, a former porn star who now runs online sex coaching courses, is helping recruit Australian teens to a neo-Nazi network, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald revealed last month. Cooper was spotted this year at a neo-Nazi training camp alongside teenage boys and young men.

This isn’t the first or only example of how a wave of online misogyny – and the influencers that peddle it – are amplifying or driving broader forms of hate. The popularity of misogynist influencers – as illustrated in the recent Netflix hit Adolescence – can carry racist, antisemitic and other hateful ideas into the mainstream. This creates a new risk that more accessible anti-feminist content will make racist and other hateful content even more acceptable to teens.

With misogyny so widespread online – and misogynist influencers holding such traction over young men – it’s essential to understand that different kinds of hate mutually reinforce and amplify one another.

Sometimes this happens directly, as Cooper and Tate illustrate. Tate, who has praised Hamas as “masculine resistance”, has made antisemitic references to “globalist” networks and questioned whether history’s telling of World War II and the Holocaust is accurate.

In other cases, the intersections are more subtle. Misogynist influencers encourage boys to reclaim their “power” or control over others and assume a stance of absolute male entitlement over women and the sexual service, domestic labour and emotional attention they provide. This requires thinking of women as inferior, subservient and in need of a strong hand. It’s a quick leap from those hierarchies of superiority and inferiority to other kinds of hate, including racism.

Misogynist influencers also lean heavily into scapegoating, telling boys and young men that their disaffection and loneliness is the fault of feminists who have stripped away men’s opportunities. This easily bleeds into other conspiracies that explain how the deck is stacked against white men – especially because online misogynists often describe women as incapable of doing this on their own – hence, it “must” be Jewish communities, for example, who are controlling women to reduce white men’s power.

Cooper and Tate are far from the only problem. There are plenty of other “relationship” coaches online, teaching seduction and manipulation techniques to control women, or railing against women’s progress as a threat to the God-given natural order of things. And while Cooper is making deliberate efforts to recruit Australian young men to a neo-Nazi group, the problem is bigger and more mainstream than the risk of recruitment to violent extremism.

The good news is that there is strong evidence of what works to counter these trends. One of the most effective tactics is to pre-bunk manipulative tactics by pointing out how influencers get wealthy by peddling hate via subscriptions, sale of products or paid courses in which followers must enrol. Cooper, for example, stands to profit from the neo-Nazi scene, as movement leaders have urged followers to sign up for Cooper’s “sexual domination” courses to learn how to make white women “submit”.

Young people don’t like to find out they are being manipulated – and when they learn about the tactics that profiteers use, they reject the propaganda along with the manipulative tactics. In a series of short-form videos my research lab produced and distributed last year to prevent persuasion by antisemitic narratives and propaganda, a one-minute video created a 7.3 per cent decrease in agreement with harmful antisemitic narratives among American college-aged youth – along with a 17.7 per cent increase in recognition of manipulative tactics and a 23.9 per cent greater likelihood to challenge antisemitic content when they encounter it. We are now at work on a similar series of videos to pre-bunk misogynistic and gender-based hate.

Digital literacy also needs to be paired with conversations with boys and girls about respect, consent and healthy relationships. The burgeoning men’s wellness movement, spearheaded by Australia’s own Movember organisation, has inspired youth-led approaches to healthier masculinities as part of strategies to enhance boys’ and men’s wellbeing, counter isolation and improve health – reducing vulnerability to the kinds of scapegoating online misogynists peddle.

In the end, we are left with a simple equation. We can either engage in these conversations with the young men in our lives, or we can let the internet do it for us. There are plenty of influencers and profiteers waiting in the wings.

Cynthia Miller-Idriss is the founding director and chief vision officer at the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at the American University in Washington, DC. Her most recent book is Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism.