The Real and Present Danger of Male Supremacist Terrorism
Alex DiBranco is Executive Director and Founder at Institute for Research on Male Supremacism. Alex stops by to discuss "Male Supremacist Terrorism as a Rising Threat". According to Dibranco, male supremacism is a right-wing extremist ideology that has contributed to terrorist attacks, primarily in the US, but also in Canada and Europe. Within male supremacist communities, the motivation for terrorist attacks stem predominantly from two core misogynist beliefs: 1) the belief that men are entitled to sexual access to women, and 2) the belief that feminists are a malevolent force controlling society at the expense of men, a frame similar to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories regarding Jewish elites controlling the world.
Alex and Brad discuss how secular and religious male supremacisms are cut from the same cloth, the dynamics of superiority and humiliation in male supremacist terrorism, and the rise of the Proud Boys.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi.
I'm faculty at the University of San Francisco and our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB.
I'm joined today by Alex DiBranco, who is the co-founder and executive director of the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism.
It's so great to be here.
She's dedicated to analyzing and challenging misogynist ideologies, movements, and violence.
Her work on male supremacism, in particular misogynist incel violence, has been published by the International Center for Counterterrorism at The Hague, New America, Political Research Associates, and other outlets.
So let me first just say, Alex, thanks for joining me.
It's so great to be here.
Thank you.
We are a show focused on religion and politics.
We focus on Christian nationalism, the religious right.
But, you know, much of what we've been discussing over recent months and what I've been researching has been in areas related to masculinity, misogyny, and so on.
And so when I discovered your work, I was just so fascinated and I was...
Really hoping we could have you on.
And here we are.
I'm really excited.
I'm looking at your great article, Male Supremacist Terrorism as a Rising Threat, which was published at the International Center for Counterterrorism.
And I just want to ask you some questions about it, because I think it raises just some incredibly important issues as it relates to our contemporary political landscape and things that we just talk about on this show all the time.
So, let me just start by asking you this.
We often hear about white supremacy.
In my line of work and in my sort of corner of the academic world and Twitter, one might hear about Christian supremacy.
Can you help us understand the ideology of male supremacy?
What is that?
And maybe, you know, what are some prominent examples at work in our country and across the globe today?
Sure.
We began using the framework of male supremacism because we found that there was this understanding to an extent of white supremacist and Christian supremacist movements, and that there wasn't as much of an understanding of misogyny as a form of supremacism.
In the way that it influences movements, the seriousness of misogyny.
And so the framework is an evolution of feminist frameworks on misogyny and patriarchy, but putting it within this kind of supremacism studies concept.
And so looking at male supremacism, male supremacism is an ideology that privileges and believes that cisgender men have the right to dominate and control or even erase the other, which is women, trans men, non-binary people in general.
And this biological essentialism that they are founded on both subordinates women and involves a really heavy dose of anti-trans ideology as part of that refusal to recognize any kind of constructs of gender other than a very rigid definition of two different sexes.
And we see male supremacism has certainly grown as a motivating ideology as gender justice and feminist movements have evolved.
Male supremacism has always, like white supremacism and Christian supremacism, been part of the core fabric of the founding of the United States.
But as women and trans people have made real, though insufficient, progress in terms of their rights, there has been more active mobilization against gender justice.
And so we see it as a more prominent kind of motivating force in the movements of the last few decades.
In the most recent manifestations, We see male supremacism and misogyny acting as a glue in contemporary anti-democratic and supremacist movements.
So looking at something like the Proud Boys, which is an organization that Most people have heard of, particularly after their involvement with the January 6th assault on the Capitol.
The Proud Boys is very different from your white supremacist, white nationalist, Aryan Nations kind of organization.
They encourage men of color to join and they also make space for gay men.
But they very specifically don't allow trans men and they don't allow women.
And so misogyny and anti-feminist conspiracy theories become the fabric that they use to recruit a wider spectrum of men outside of just white men.
And I think under the kind of organizing that we've seen with movements that we still have our traditional white nationalist version of white supremacist movements, but then we also have these other versions which include white supremacist and racist dimensions.
They, you know, Attacks on critical race theory, refusal to recognize racism within the United States, but use often the attacks on feminism and the sense of biological essentialism as the forefront of how they are bringing together these new men only groups.
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