The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny ​ ​Harvey 1

The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny

Jamie Harvey
December 2020

Intro To Political Inquiry And Writing PSCI 2000

The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny ​ ​Harvey 2

Statement of Purpose

The alt-right is an increasingly influential political and social force that is difficult to

empirically study due to its unstructured nature. It is of critical importance that academia

thoroughly analyzes the alt-right’s nature, narratives, and appeal in order to combat them more

effectively and with more impactful counter programming. This task has become additionally

important in 2020 due to the large scale militarization of the far right in response to COVID-19

lockdowns and Black Lives Matter protests (Ong 2020). This research seeks to quantitatively

validate or challenge the observations of many political scientists and researchers by examining

if misogyny is endemic to the alt-right.

Literature Review

The core of alt-right ideology according to Gray W. Philip (2018) is the conceptualization

of a national identity based upon race. The alt-right rallies around a particularly caustic

right-wing form of identity politics that seeks to raise the racial consciousness of white people,

primarily white men. Alt-right ideology views multicultural societies based around creeds (like

the US constitution) as inherently flawed and fated to fail. This idea leads naturally into the

influential alt-right narrative that western societies are in a state of decline due to

multiculturalism and ‘decadence’ (Philip 2018). Although racism, white nationalism, and

antisemitism are all rightfully considered central to the ethos of the alt-right, hyper-masculinity

and by extension misogyny are also thoroughly embedded in alt-right culture. Dr. Josh Vandiver

(2020), a political scientist at Ball State University posits that political ideologies can be

understood through their core, adjacent, and periphery concepts. According to Vandiver, the core

concepts of alt-right ideology are the ideal of the white nation or ethnostate, the tradition of a
The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny ​ ​Harvey 3

political right, and masculinity. The alt-right differs from past far-right movements through the

explicit centering of ​masculinity​ rather than the more traditionally important concepts of virality

and strength. Much like how the alt-right's fixation on race centers the protection of the white

nation from multiculturalism the alt-rights fixation on manhood centers the narrative that strong

masculine men must stave off and reverse the decline of masculinity (Vandiver 2020).

Although the alt-right conceptualization of masculinity sometimes draws from

Christianity and the classics it is primarily described in, largely pseudoscientific, biologistic

terms (Vandiver 2020). This particular view of masculinity was introduced to the modern

alt-right through the movement's association with The Manosphere, an online community of

misogynist anti-feminists (Vandiver 2020). The alt-right is associated with a large rogues gallery

of online hate organizations that radical right researcher Dr. Bharath Ganesh (2018) labeled

digital hate culture. Ganesh describes digital hate culture as a “complex swarm of users that form

contingent alliances to contest contemporary political culture and inject their ideology into new

spaces” (Ganesh 2018). Ideas and talking points that start out in a particular subculture can

quickly proliferate through the larger digital hate culture, one prominent example of this is the

red pill. Red pill philosophy purports “to awaken men to feminism’s misandry and

brainwashing” which allows men to become aware of the truth and “to develop sexual strategy

based on exploiting the purported hard-wired sexual inclinations of all women” (Ganesh 2018).

The idea of the red pill originated in the manosphere but spread to become one of the two major

unifying concepts of digital hate culture. The phrase entered popular use as a way to describe

antifeminist awakening but as the term spread around the hate culture ecosystem it evolved to

represent a state of being “red pilled” or awakened to the truth by “becoming aware of a
The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny ​ ​Harvey 4

totalizing view of the West as under threat by both immigrants and a range of intersecting

ideologies ... threaten Western civilization” (Ganesh 2018).

Samantha Kutner (2020) of the International Center for Counter-Terrorism studied the

alt-right group the Proud Boys and found that they utilize antifeminist red pill rhetoric as a

recruitment tool to attract dissatisfied young men. Instead of focusing inward or on the things

materially affecting them “Proud Boys attribute their plight to women, women who have defied

what they believe to be the natural order of things'' and as such they seek to reassert control via

fundamentalist gender roles (Kutner 2020). Proud Boys hijack narratives and symbols of

oppression to portray themselves as the victims and “can turn any issue or criticism against them

into evidence of their own oppression, while discounting the humanity of others'' (Kutner 2020).

The Proud Boy’s misogyny intersects with their white supremacy within their rhetoric of

resentment towards white women who date non-white men (Kutner 2020). Despite their

narratives of vulnerability, Proud Boys also often over-perform masculinity and aggression in

order to solidify their perceived red pilled status. Although it is unclear to what extent her

observations can be generalized to the alt-right as a whole, Kutner’s research provides valuable

insight into the drift of misogynistic manosphere narratives into the alt-right.

The connection between the alt-right and the misogynistic manosphere is further

reinforced by the transference of white nationalism into the manosphere. A particularly virulent

faction of the manospher known as incels have become increasingly violent. When reviewing the

online activities of incels who commit mass acts of violence it becomes apparent that the

“attackers have taken to weaving white supremacist ideologies, including racist and anti-Semitic

sentiments, into their toxic masculine narratives” (Ong 2020). In his manifesto incel mass

murder Elliot Rodgers lamented that he “could not understand how ‘an inferior, ugly black boy’
The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny ​ ​Harvey 5

could ‘get a white girl’ when he ‘descended from British aristocracy’ and the black boy ‘from

slaves’” (Ong 2020).

Although the alt-right is also no stranger to terroistic violence (according to the

Department of Homeland Security “Homeland Threat Assessment October 2020” “white

supremacist extremists … will remain the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland”)

they also participate in online harassemnt and trolling, oftentimes of women. The alt-right has

adopted the “practices and aesthetics of misogynist, trolling, and gaming subcultures” as a way

to spread their message (Ganesh 2020). Alt-right online trolling is particularly caustic when

directed towards women. Feminist scholar Theodore Koulouris recorded and analyzed the

harassment that he received online after his public debate with (at the time) widely popular

alt-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos. He noticed that, although he did receive a wide range

of insults, he received none of the threats of gratuitous violence or rape that women in his

position have received. He attributes this disparity to the fact that members of the alt-right view

him as “de facto superior to the countless women who have received torrents of abuse online”

due to his sex (Theodore 2018).

Online harassment of women, especially of women speaking out in the digital political

sphere, “is a barrier to women's participation in activism both on and offline” (Jane 2018).

Women, and to an even greater extent women of color and LGBT+ women, are targeted and

harassed online simply for being women. Rising right wing populist political influences are

intensifying the patriarchal rhetoric of traditional right wing factions and amplifying it through

social media (Jane 2018).

The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny ​ ​Harvey 6

Hypothesis

The alt-right, though its connection to the manosphere and through its own internal

prejudices, has misogyny embedded into its core. Because alt-right ideology and narratives have

been shown to contain misogyny I hypothesize that, when compared to other internet forums,

alt-right intent forums have a higher percentage of posts that contain misogyny. This research

has the potential to add to the knowledge base by strengthening the link between the theoretical

and practical understandings of the alt-right. The alt-right is an increasingly powerful political

force in the United States as members of the movement make their grievances known both

through both traditional political channels and through acts of political violence. It is important

to better understand the alt-right so activists and academics can better deconstruct their

narratives, deradicalise their members, and cut off their recruitment pool. This research also has

the potential to add to the knowledge base surrounding digital misogyny in a way that could be

helpful to combating digital misogyny.

Operational Definitions

Alt-Right​ - A loose connection of far-right, whte nationalist, and neo-fascist groups and
ideologies that feed off of and into each other.

Misogyny​ - The manifestation of hostility towards women because they are women. For online
misogyny, the manifestation of hostility communicated through online platforms, particularly
social media and other participatory environments. Definition from (Baker, Jurasz 2019).

Forum​ - An online post-based community centered around discussion of a particular topic. For
the purpose of this research discussion groups created on or for a parent website (eg. a facebook
group) will be considered a forum.

Women​ - People that identify as women. This research includes transgender women as women.
The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny ​ ​Harvey 7

Methodology Overview

In order to discern whether or not alt-right forums contain a higher percentage of posts

with explicit misogyny compared to other internet forums, it is necessary to generate quantitative

data about the content of forum posts on different types of forums. This data will be collected via

a panel study of 20 forums (five alt-right forums, five mainstream conservative forums, five

mainstream liberal forums, and five apolitical forums) conducted over a period of six months

with data categorized in weekly batches. We chose to record data about five different types of

forums rather than about just alt-right or non-alt-right forums because it expands the types of

conclusions we can draw by allowing us to compare the levels of digital misogyny across a wider

section of the political spectrum using the apolitical forums as a baseline.

Starting the first day of the study and continuing through its six-month duration we will

use a computer program to copy every post made on a subject forum and log it as a numbered

entry. Every entry will contain the copied text of a post, screenshots of any images associated

with that post, and the time and date the post was made. Entries will not contain any identifying

information about the poster (eg. username or IP address) to avoid ethical concerns. We will

record new posts as entries within 15 seconds of their posting. Posts that are later removed by the

original poster, forum moderators, or the parent website (eg. Facebook) will be included in the

dataset. Each entry will contain information from only one post and every post will create only

one entry. Replies and comments won’t be recorded and are not included in the scope of this

study in order to reduce the number of entries researchers will need to manually review,

decreasing overall time investment and increasing feasibility. In order to maintain consistency,

entries will follow the naming convention FORUMTYPE_FORUMNAME_ENTRYNUMBER

and be organized in the file structure shown in Figure. 1 below. We will store our data both on
The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny ​ ​Harvey 8

the hard drive of the computer running the program and on a password protected private web

server in order to prevent data loss and make entries more readily available to researchers

working remotely.

Before uploading entries to the web server, a computer program will search the entries'

text for keywords and phrases and then assign each entry one of four tags: PROB, FEMREF,

IMAG, and NOIMAG. If an entry contains any words or phrases that indicate misogyny (See

Table. 1) then the program will highlight those words or phrases in red and the post will be

tagged PROB for probable misogyny. If an entry contains any words or phrases that reference

women (See Table. 1) but does not contain any words or phrases that indicate misogyny then the

program will highlight women referencing words or phrases in yellow and the post will be

tagged FEMREF for female referencing. If the post does not contain any references to women or

any words or phrases that indicate misogyny the program will tag it either IMAG if it has an

image associated with it or NOIMAG if it does not have an image associated with it.

PROBMIS Words and Phrases FEMREF Words and Phrases

2hole She
airhead Her
Armenian Hers
attention whore Woman
Women
The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny ​ ​Harvey 9

ballbuster Females
beast from hell Feminie
behemoth Fem
bimbo Lesbian
bitch Lesbo
SJW
bitchface
Feminist
bleater Feminism
See Full List
Table 1. - Many of the PROBMIS Words and Phrases are pulled from “noun” and “adjective”
datasets compiled by Emma Jane (2018) for her Random Rape Threat Generator. The rest of the
PROBMIS words and phrases were compiled based on my understanding of alt-right and incel
rhetoric and my own experience as an assigned female at birth nonbinary person living openly on
the internet.

The program will tag and upload entries to the private web server regularly to avoid data

loss from hardware malfunctions. Once a week a team of eight researchers will log onto the

server using their own unique credentials to review that week's entries using the coding questions

below (See Coding Questions). Each type of forum will be analyzed by two researchers who will

both review entries and classify them as either explicitly misogynistic (MIS) or not explicitly

misogynistic (NOMIS). If the two researchers disagree about the classification of an entry they

will note the disagreement and seek the opinion of a randomized third researcher to break the tie.

Researchers will cycle through both partners and forum types to avoid bias and limit the

exposure of any particular researcher to potentially disturbing alt-right content.

Researchers will review entries tagged as PROB first and determine if the passage the

program marked is indeed misogynistic. If the program correctly identified a highlighted passage

as misogynistic then the entry should be categorized as MIS. If the program misidentified the

highlighted passages then the researcher will treat the entry as a FEMREF entry and remove the

red highlights. After categorizing the entries tagged as PROB the research teams will review

entries tagged as FEMREF. When reviewing FEMREF entries researchers will read through the

text of the entries until they encounter something that one of the coding questions would identify
The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny ​ ​Harvey 10

as misogynistic. The researchers will highlight the misogynistic passage in red and categorize the

entry as MIS before moving on to the next entry. If a researcher does not encounter any

misogyny and the entry does not contain any images the researcher will categorize the entry as

NOMIS. If the entry does contain a photo the photo will be reviewed by the researchers. If the

photo contains misogyny then the researchers will categorize the entry as MIS and if it does not

contain misogyny then they will categorize it as NOMIS. After categorizing the entries tagged

FEMREF researchers will then review IMAG entries. When reviewing IMAG entries researchers

will focus on the image and use the coding questions to determine if the image contains

misogynistic content. If the image does contain misogynist content then researchers will

categorize the entry as MIS and if it does not they will categorize it as NOMIS. All posts tagged

by the program as NOIMAG will be categorized as NOMIS. Although this method of

categorization may lead to some posts being miscategorized by computer or human error the

time saved by not fully reading every entry is worth the slight increase in the potential for error.

Data Analysis

We will record the number of entries categorized as MIS and NOMIS for each forum

every week in a cumulative spreadsheet. Using the spreadsheet data, we will determine the

percentage of posts per forum that contain misogyny by using the formula (Number of MIS

Entries/Total Number of Entries) X 100. Those percentages will be averaged together by

category to determine the mean percentage of posts containing misogyny for each forum type.

These averages can be compared to determine which type of forum contains the highest

percentage of misogynistic posts. We will also use the sum of all of the entries from every type

of forum to determine the overall percentage of entries in a type of forum that contain misogyny.
The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny ​ ​Harvey 11

Both the mean percentage and overall percentage are helpful in further understanding the

alt-right. The mean percentage gives equal weight to all forums and provides a more holistic

view of the overall digital landscape while the overall percentage more heavily weights forums

with more posts, and most likely more members, which provides insight into the experience of

most users. The advantage of collecting this data every week over a six month period is that we

can explore trends over time in our data. This information could be used to form new hypotheses

about the impact of current events on digital misogyny or the correlation among different types

of forum that could further contribute to the field. Another benefit of adding time order to this

research is that we can study the statistical variance in a way that will expand what we can claim

about misogyny online.

Sampling Method

The alt-right is a difficult entity to study due to its effervescent and amorphous nature.

This difficulty is only intensified by the deplatforming of their forums which makes it difficult to

find and study established alt-right digital spaces (Vandiver 2020). There is no list of popular

alt-right forums that a researcher can easily select a random sample from. So, in order to ensure

as much randomness as possible, we will use a multistage sampling process. We will search for

forums that fit the requirements (listed below) of one of the five types of forum we hope to study

and compile a list of at least twenty forums for each of the five types. From there, we will use a

random number generator to select five forums of each type to be our sample. Non-public forums

that require an account, application, or request to join will be included in the first stage of the

sampling process and will be eligible for selection as a subject forum. It is, unfortunately,

necessary to include non-public forums in our sample because many in the alt-right don't want to
The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny ​ ​Harvey 12

voice their views in an open setting, so excluding non-public forums from selection would make

our sample less representative of the alt-right as a whole. This study's unit of analysis is forums

and not individuals therefore in the interest of ethical responsibility it is important that any

identifying information is not shared with the public. Although researchers will not be

intentionally collecting personal information some personal data may still be visible in the text or

images of recorded entries. We will redact individually identifying information like names,

locations, and likeness from entry text and images before the source data is ever widely

disseminated.

General Forum Requirements

All forums included in the study must have at least 500 members.

Alt-Right Forum Requirements

If the answer to any of these questions is “yes” then a forum can be considered alt-right.

- Does the forum claim to be alt-right?

- Does the forum name or the official rules include a notable amount of alt-right slang or
buzzwords?
- Is the forum center around the protection of white identity, white race or white
nationhood?
- Does the forum promote one or more of the following?
- great replacement theory
- white genocide theory
- race realism
- the JQ or Jewish question

Conservative Forum Requirements

If the answer to any of these questions is “yes” then a forum can be considered conservative.

- Is this forum aligned with the mainstream Republican party?

- Does this forum center around traditional fiscal or social conservatism?
The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny ​ ​Harvey 13

Liberal Forum Requirements

If the answer to any of these questions is “yes” then a forum can be considered liberal.

- Is this forum aligned with the mainstream Democratic party?

- Does the forum center around center-left politics?

Apolitical Forum Requirements

In order to be considered an apolitical forum a forum must not center around any political
ideology or party.

Coding Questions

If the answer to any of one these questions is “yes” then an entry can be categorized as MIS.

- Does this promote the strict enforcement of gender roles on women?

- Does this make derogatory generalizations about women?
- Does this promote, justify, or threaten physical or sexual violence against women?
- Does this belittle or insult someone for being a woman?
- Does this use sexist language?

Limitations

The panel study design provides a reasonably strong case for correlation if not

necessarily causation. Controlling for possible intervening variables like the gender composition

of forum membership would require collecting information about forum users which poses both

feasibility and ethics concerns. Regardless of this, the data collected by this study would still

provide valuable insight into the ubiquity of misogyny in alt-right spaces. The generalizability of

this data is limited both by the relatively small sample size of our research and by the amorphous

nature of the alt-right itself. Regardless of those limitations, this research will serve to

statistically corroborate or challenge what many social and political scientists have theorized

about the alt-right - that it is a profoundly misogynistic movement. Although this connection to
The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny ​ ​Harvey 14

theory could be strengthened by a more comprehensive coding system that recognizes different

narratives of misogyny, such a coding system would add significantly to the already substantial

amount of time and resources that this research requires. Conducting this study will require the

development of a specialized program that, while simplistic, will take expertise to craft. This

research also necessitates a somewhat sophisticated computer and a web server which will both

cost some amount to purchase and set up. Along with those initial expenses, this study will also

require a substantial amount of researcher time and effort to conduct and manage.

Plan to Share Findings

After the completion of this research I would like to publish my findings in both the form

of a research report published in a peer reviewed journal and a publicly available website. In

terms of journals, I would optimally like to pursue having my research published in either a

cultural studies journal (eg. ​Cultural Studies​) or a counter-terroism journal (eg. ​Counter Terrorist

Trends and Analyses​). Although, considering my own juniority and the generalizability

limitations of my research I will most likely submit my findings to the ​Pi Sigma Alpha

Undergraduate Journal of Politics ​for publication. In addition to academic publication I would

also like to make my research readily available on an easily digestible public facing website in

order to make my research more accessible to non-political-science-majors attempting to learn

more about the alt-right.

The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny ​ ​Harvey 15

References

Barker, Kim, and Jurasz, Olga. 2019. “Online Misogyny: A Challenge For Digital Feminism?”

Journal of International Affairs 7​ 2, no. 2.

http://search.ebscohost.com.leo.lib.unomaha.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=1

38663346&site=ehost-live&scope=site (Accessed October 12, 2020)

Ganesh, Bharath. 2018. “THE UNGOVERNABILITY OF DIGITAL HATE CULTURE”

Journal of International Affairs​ 71, no.2 https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26552328

(Accessed December 10, 2020)

Ganesh, Bharath. 2020. “Weaponizing white thymos: flows of rage in the online audiences of the

alt-right” ​Cultural Studies 3​ 6, no. 6. (January)

https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2020.1714687 (Accessed December 12, 2020)

Gray, Phillip W. 2018. “‘The fire rises’: identity, the alt-right and intersectionality.” ​Journal of

Political Ideologies ​23, no. 2 (June)

http://search.ebscohost.com.leo.lib.unomaha.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=1

29302086&site=ehost-live&scope=site. (Accessed October 7, 2020)

Jane, Emma A. 2018. “Systemic misogyny exposed: Translating Rapeglish from the Manosphere

with a Random Rape Threat Generator” ​International Journal of Cultural Studies 2​ 1, no.

6 (November)

http://search.ebscohost.com.leo.lib.unomaha.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=1

32518400&site=ehost-live&scope=site. (Accessed October 12, 2020)

Koulouris, Theodore. 2018. “Online misogyny and the alternative right: debating the

undebatable.” ​Feminist Media Studies 1​ 8, no. 4 (August)

http://web.b.ebscohost.com.leo.lib.unomaha.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=0a2be3d6
The Alt-Right and Digital Misogyny ​ ​Harvey 16

-76d7-46d4-b991-e36c918885b3%40pdc-v-sessmgr06&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl

2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=a9h&AN=130602489. (Accessed October 11, 2020)

Kutner, Samantha. 2020. “Swiping Right: The Allure of Hyper Masculinity and Cryptofacism

for Men Who Join the Proud Boys​.”​ ​International Center for Counter-Terrorism.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep25259. (Accessed October 9, 2020)

Ong, Kyler. 2020. “Ideological Convergence in the Extreme Right” ​Counter Terrorist Trends

and Analyses ​12, no. 5 (September) https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26954256

(Accessed December 13, 2020)

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 2020. “Homeland Threat Assessment October 2020”

https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/2020_10_06_homeland-threat-assess

ment.pdf (Accessed December 10, 2020)