Beyond the Bro Speak

How the Manosphere Nurtures the ‘Alpha Warriors’ of Political Violence

James Bloodworth spent five years investigating the internet subcultures fostering communities of toxic misogyny. The lethal actions of its members – dismissed as ‘lone wolves’ – are a direct result of the thinking embedded in these extreme online spaces

In her 2020 book Trust Me, I’m Trolling: Irony and the Alt-Right’s Political Aesthetic, the American academic Julia DeCook revealed how trolling had become a political aesthetic on the extreme right.

“Hiding behind hoaxes, irony, edginess, and trolling, members of the alt-right and other extremist internet subcultures then engage in a kind of subversion that allows them to avoid taking any responsibility for real and violent attacks that occur as a result of their discourse”, she wrote. Edgy jokes and provocations allowed for plausible deniability, creating space for extremists to accuse progressives of ‘seeing ghosts’. Anybody taking offence was accused of being ‘hysterical’.

From 2018 to 2023, I investigated the ‘manosphere’ – a collection of male supremacist subcultures that include pick-up artists and men’s rights activists, as well as incels (‘involuntary celibates’), and male separatists. Each group is united in its desire to breathe life back into older patriarchal theories.