What are the links between misogyny, violent extremism, and online radicalisation?

Misogyny is a common theme across different forms of violent extremism and attitudes that normalise and excuse violence against women are the single strongest attitudinal predictor of violent extremism.

• With changing digital norms, online environments are amplifying extremist attitudes.
• Extremist misogynistic beliefs often intertwine with other beliefs including racism, anti-government conspiracy theories, anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTIQ+ beliefs.
• Violence against women and girls online is negatively impacting their participation in public life, which threatens their full democratic participation.
• Suggested pathways for addressing the issue include both prevention and intervention efforts, such as strengthening global frameworks to recognise misogyny as a driver of extremism, challenging harmful gender norms, and intervening directly with men and boys online and offline.

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New report on misogyny, online radicalisation, and youth extremism released

A new report has been released by the University of Melbourne that details the findings of an Australian government-funded research project into misogyny and youth radicalisation. Misogyny, online radicalisation, and youth extremism in Australia, authored by Sara Meger, examines the extent to which Australian adolescents and adults hold and endorse misogynistic attitudes, attitudes permissive of violence against women, and violent extremist attitudes.

Based on a survey of 1122 young people aged between 13-17 years, of all genders, and of 2307 adults, of all genders, in October-November 2025, this report concludes:

“…Misogyny is not a peripheral or incidental feature of violent extremism in Australia, but a central, crosscutting predictor of extremist orientations across the full ideological spectrum – from incel ideology and religious extremism to white supremacy and right-wing politics. Attitudes that normalise and excuse violence against women (VAW) are the single strongest attitudinal predictor of violent extremism, exceeding the predictive power of all measured online behavioural variables.”

Challenges the report identifies:

• A concerning proportion of adolescent boys and girls express misogynistic attitudes and attitudes permissive of violence against women.
• Roughly 1/3 of teenaged boys express misogynistic attitudes, mistrust of women, and a belief in ‘traditional’ gender roles.
• Teenaged boys are the most likely in our sample to agree with a range of violent extremist attitudes, with over 26% agreeing with right-wing extremist attitudes and 27% agreeing with white supremacist attitudes.
• 30-35% of boys and men of all ages express the belief that gender equality measures have gone too far; 24- 29% believe that feminism is a hate movement.
• Gen Z and Millennial male respondents and Gen Z female respondents are the most likely to agree with all forms of violent extremist attitudes.
• Particular online environments are more likely to produce both problematic gender attitudes and attitudes supportive of violent extremism, but not the ones we typically assume. These are: online dating; pornography use; and engagement with ‘manfluencers’.

Key findings:

1. Misogyny is a robust, crosscutting predictor of violent extremism
2. Violence against women (VAW) attitudes are the dominant, proximal predictor of extremism
3. Online environments amplify but do not create extremist orientation
4. Teachers are at the front line of dealing with these problems in real time.

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What drives misogynistic violent extremism

A report from Promundo-US, Masculinities and Preventing Violent Extremism: Making the Connections, uses an ecological model to reframe the gender norms that influence men’s and boys’ actions and shape their vulnerabilities with regard to violent extremism:

1. At the individual level – men’s harmful attitudes, history of intimate partner violence (IPV), gender socialization, work-life trajectories, and religious beliefs.
2. At the family and community level – men’s childhood experiences, including parental involvement and the intergenerational transmission of violence, as well as their social networks and emotional connectedness as adults, and any family members or peers who are involved in violent extremism.
3. At the structural level – men’s lack of economic opportunities, and their perception of loss or “failed masculinity” tied to a sense of economic or job entitlement, as well as political grievances, and the militarization of society (i.e., when military or police forces become key societal institutions, highly present, visible, and influential in the community, often to the point of shaping the population’s daily interactions).

In a 2024, Vine released a previous news story on online misogyny and violent extremism. It highlighted Te Mana Whakaatu | the Classification Office’s report Online Misogyny and Violent Extremism: Understanding the Landscape (2024). It found that:

• New trends in extremist beliefs are emerging, particularly among boys and young men. These include individuals adopting mixed and unstable beliefs as well as some who are not tied to any specific ideology but are drawn solely to violence itself.
• Algorithms amplify misogynistic and extremist content, making it easier for vulnerable people to encounter and possibly adopt more extreme ideologies.
• Girls and women are more likely to experience online violence including more severe violence and gender-based violence, and this spans a continuum across online and offline violence.
• Gendered disinformation is increasing with significant impacts to girls and women in leadership including journalists, political leaders and public figures
• Extremist misogynistic beliefs often intertwine with other beliefs including racism, anti-government conspiracy theories, anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTIQ+ beliefs

In 2024, a resource was developed by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) with support from the New Zealand Department for Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Department of Internal Affairs, Positive online intervention playbook: innovating responses to a shifting online extremist landscape in New Zealand. It highlights the need to integrate counter-extremism work within broader violence prevention strategies, such as efforts to tackle domestic violence, as misogyny is a common factor across different forms of extremism.

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Links between misogyny, violent extremism, and white supremacy

In 2026, ANROWS released An introductory guide to the manosphere and the impacts for young people, teachers and schools, which discusses the strong links between misogynistic ideologies and men’s use of violent extremism. It gives examples of high-profile incidents of misogynistic extremism carried out by men who identified as belonging to manosphere communities. It also highlights how some forms of misogynistic ideologies are also underpinned by racism and white supremacy:

“Some communities and influencers in the manosphere also promote white supremacist and nationalist beliefs and conspiracy theories that encourage racist violence and discrimination against people of colour, including First Nations peoples and migrant communities. For example, some beliefs portray white men and boys as victims of both feminism and multiculturalism, promote racist myths about men of colour as being lesser than white men and encourage white heterosexual couples to reproduce and “save” the “white race”.”

UN Women’s report, Engaging men, ending violence: pathways to safer digital futures, also highlights:

“There is growing evidence of cross-pollination between the manosphere and the alt-right, underpinned by a shared narrative that white male identity is under siege by feminism, globalization, and multiculturalism.”

In Aotearoa, Te Tari Taiwhenua | Department of Internal Affairs found in their 2025 Transparency Report on Digital Violence Extremism that they received 656 website link referrals containing potentially objectionable terrorist and violent extremist content (TVEC). 42% of these were then classified as objectionable, with 32% of all referrals related to the Christchurch terrorist attack. 50% of all referrals were associated with identity-moved violent extremism, specifically “white-identity” extremism (89% of this category).

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The cooling effect on women’s participation online and in public life

In early 2026, Vine released a news story on the escalation of online violence against women in the public sphere where we discuss how attacks against women are now spilling offline, affecting women’s safety, well-being, and ability to participate freely in public debate. Two key publications we highlight in this article include:

Misogyny, racism, and threats to our families: a qualitative study of harassment of female politicians (2025)

This qualitative study explores the experiences and impacts of harassment among female Members of Parliament (MPs) in New Zealand. It analyses four key themes in the abuse MPs, their staff, and their families face and links these to wider challenges for democracy and representation.

Tipping point: The chilling escalation of online violence against women in the public sphere (2025)

The brief draws on a global multilingual survey of women human rights defenders, activists, and journalists in 119 countries and finds urgent responsive measures are needed to address the very real risk of physical harm to women caused by online violence.

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Strategies to address misogynistic violent extremism

UN Women’s report, Engaging men, ending violence: pathways to safer digital futures, suggests different interventions to help break this cycle, including:

• Employing targeted online advertising to counter harmful ideologies by redirecting users searching for harmful content to credible alternatives
• Addressing technology-facilitated violence against women by disrupting common tools of online abuse e.g. hashing non-consensual intimate images
• Targeting online roots of abuse and reshaping gendered behaviour in digital spaces by providing young men with specialised support through behaviour-change techniques, community support, addiction-recovery and others
• Strengthening global frameworks to address the issue, e.g., include explicit criteria for incel-related activities and GBV in extremist detection systems, recognizing the continuum between online and offline threats and technology’s role in spreading misogynistic ideology
• Requiring technology companies to explicitly address misogyny and content normalizing VAWG within their hate speech and extremist content policies and codes of conduct.

In a report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), Incels in Australia: The ideology, the threat, and a way forward, the authors make recommendations designed to reduce and, where possible, prevent the risk of future occurrence of incel and similar violence in Australia. Recommendations include:

• Formally recognising ideologically motivated misogynistic violence as subject to terrorism laws
• Including gendered violence as hate speech
• Developing and implementing preventative community education programs
• Adopting misogynistic-incel intervention programs modelled after violent extremism deradicalisation
• Develop alternative, healthy online environments for men

Promundo-US’s report, Masculinities and Preventing Violent Extremism: Making the Connections, makes recommendations to prevent and counter misogynistic violent extremism, including:

• Recognize that gender norms influence vulnerability to violent extremism, and that challenging harmful gender norms directly is key to PVE
• Understand that violent extremism is one form on a continuum of violence and that masculine norms contribute to multiple forms of violence
• Building on the success of psychosocial support models for individuals who have witnessed or experienced violence, provide spaces for youth – particularly young men – to gather and reflect on their own experiences of violence, learn healthy coping mechanisms, and challenge their long-held negative gender attitudes
• Move away from military actions against specific groups, which can often act as “trigger points.” Experiences of injustice, discrimination, corruption, and abuse by security forces act as drivers for violent extremist group recruitment

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Bibliography and new Vine Quick Topic Search

2025 transparency report: digital violent extremism report, Department of Internal Affairs (2026)

An introductory guide to the manosphere and the impacts for young people, teachers and schools, ANROWS (2026)

Engaging men, ending violence: pathways to safer digital futures, UN Women (2026)

Incels in Australia: The ideology, the threat, and a way forward, Australian Strategic Policy Institute (2023)

Masculinities and Preventing Violent Extremism: Making the Connections, Promundo-US (2020)

Misogyny, online radicalisation, and youth extremism in Australia, University of Melbourne (2026)

Misogyny, racism, and threats to our families: a qualitative study of harassment of female politicians, Watson et. al. (2025)

Online Misogyny and Violent Extremism: Understanding the Landscape, Classification Office (2024)

Positive online intervention playbook: innovating responses to a shifting online extremist landscape in New Zealand, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (2024)

Tipping point: The chilling escalation of online violence against women in the public sphere, UN Women (2025)

For more research and reports on the links between misogyny and extremism check out the new Quick Topic search in our Vine Library - ‘Misogyny and extremism’. You can find the list by going to our Quick Topic section and expanding the section labelled ‘Types of violence’.