Important Facts For Prelims
Incel Movement
- 20 Aug 2021
- 3 min read
Why in News
Recently, the Incel Movement has been linked to serious violence around the world.
- The movement came into the spotlight yet again in the UK’s Plymouth, where a 22-year-old man shot dead five people, including a toddler.
Key Points
- About:
- It is a dangerous online subculture comprising men who identify as ‘involuntary celibates’ and regularly express deeply misogynistic views about women.
- Men who are part of this movement harbour a deep resentment towards both women and other men who are sexually active.
- They blame women for their own lack of sexual and social status. While views tend to vary, some believe that sex is their right — something that is owed to them by virtue of them being males.
- An extreme section of Incels even advocate violence against women. However, not all members of the subculture are violent, experts say.
- Red Pill & Black Pill Mentality:
- The black pill theory, often associated with incels, promotes the defeatist idea that your fate is sealed at birth and no matter what changes you try to make, your sexual capital cannot be altered.
- Red pillers, on the other hand, believe the world is biased toward women, and see feminism as female supremacy. They believe there is a systemic bias in favour of women.
- Concerns:
- The movement has been identified as a strand of a broader trend of young white males being radicalised online.
- It shares some similarities with the better known alt-right movement, with both groups attributing society’s ills to social liberalism, women and ethnic minorities.
- The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement.
- So far, incel-related attacks are not perceived as as much of a terror threat in the US when compared to violent attacks by followers of other violent far-right ideologies, according to an analysis of domestic terror attacks by the New America Foundation.
- But the same analysis found that incel terrorism is deadlier than far-left terrorism.
