United in aggrievement: Masculinities and collective identity in the Manosphere and the far-right

The ‘Alt-Right’ is not only predominantly male, and virulently misogynist; it is also crucially motivated by male entitlement and aggrievement. This aggrievement, induced by a perceived marginalization of (white) men throughout society and seen to be perpetuated by liberalism and feminism is also a key component of the so-called ‘manosphere’ - an online space of male supremacists. Drawing from concepts of collective identity building in social movements - particularly online, we consider masculinity a key component of identity production in both movements. In this paper, we address the question ‘How do male-supremacist and far-right ideologies cross-fertilize, and what role do masculinities play in the construction of their collective identities and intertwined worldviews?’ To answer these questions, we rely on a novel dataset of web-network data from the manosphere and the anglophone far-right and their means of self-presentation. We conduct an analysis of a sample of the most prominent webpages of both communities, as well as of data from the relevant Reddit forums. We find that two narratives bring the online movements together; the first is the narrative of ‘Taking the Red Pill’. This conspiracy mechanism, which is based on a narrative of exposing a hidden truth then brings about (several) shared bogeymen and opponents, mainly feminism and multiculturalism, which provide the ground for the second narrative of (white, male) victimhood. Through these two mechanisms, male supremacists and white supremacists expose different collective identities, in which masculinity plays a central, yet varied role and becomes interlinked with other identity markers such as ethnicity, sexuality and class. Conceptualizing the intertwining of these identity markers as crucial elements of various ideologies - in both the far-right and the Manosphere can help to sketch out differences and overlaps between the movements.