Knowledge Bank

The ever-increasing potential of the internet to widely disseminate information and easily connect large numbers of individuals has fundamentally altered the dynamics of social integration, influence and movements. This is especially true of modern reactionary movements, who have been able to use the anonymity of the internet to spread propaganda and recruit new members with little fear of sanctions. One very clear and poignant example of this is the "Involuntary Celibate" or "Incel" movement—a movement that has emerged over the recent decade that has garnered attention owing to its backlash toward women and connection to several particularly high-profile domestic terrorism cases. This thesis, which builds on several social science literatures, seeks to understand Incels as a reactionary social movement, with particular attention paid to their depiction of women, their framing of grievances, and their strategies for political mobilization. My analyses, which use a combination of web-scraping of Incel online discourse, rich qualitative materials and text analysis, constructs a depiction of participants and their endorsement of violent action. I find that gender and the relative status of women as sexual objects specifically fundamentally underlies followers' core identities and grievances. Moreover, and despite being little explicit advocation of collective political action, there is a significant element of celebration when it comes toward engaging in independent violence toward women. I address these core findings, and then conclude by discussing the untraditional mobilization strategies of Incels—strategies that center mostly on coping with grievances rather than overcoming them, but that nevertheless also find ways to embrace individualized gender violence.