Misogyny: Overlooked Driver of Far-Right Extremist Violence
A new NPR investigation reveals that virulent misogyny has become an increasingly central component of far-right extremist ideology, yet it often goes unrecognized by law enforcement and counterterrorism officials. The report, published May 27 by national security correspondent Odette Yousef, is anchored to the May 18 attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego, where two teenage gunmen killed three people before taking their own lives.
The suspects — ages 17 and 18 — left behind a 75-page manifesto and a livestreamed video that reveal deep ideological roots in white nationalism, antisemitism, and a virulent hatred of women that experts say has become as important as racism within these movements. The victims were identified as Amin Abdullah, a security guard who helped protect more than 100 children inside the mosque, Mansour Kaziha, and Nadir Awad.
The Central Role of Misogyny
The manifesto attributed to the suspects lays out a clear hierarchy of hatred. “After the Jew, the most evil creature in the world is the woman,” it states. “This is because after Jews, women tend to cause all the problems in the world.” The document uses dehumanizing language popular in “incel” (involuntary celibate) communities, including the slur “foid” — short for “female humanoid organism” — a term designed to portray women as subhuman.
Alex DiBranco, executive director of the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism, told NPR she was struck by how deeply misogyny ran through the manifesto. “I was surprised when I opened the manifesto — having looked at the prior media coverage — at how deeply blatant the misogyny was throughout,” DiBranco said. She noted that one suspect begins by naming Jewish people as the primary enemy, then immediately declares women the second.
Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said the level of explicit woman-hating marks a significant shift. “He just flat out says he hates women and that they’re the devil and they’re destroying everything,” Beirich said. “And this is an important thing, because that kind of misogyny did not exist in white supremacist circles, say, 10, 15 years ago.”
Accelerationism and the “Saints” Culture
The suspects identified as “accelerationists” — adherents of a tactic within far-right extremism that promotes terrorism to hasten societal collapse and rebuild a patriarchal white ethnostate. They referred to themselves as “Sons of Tarrant,” invoking Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people in the 2019 Christchurch mosque attack. As Slate reported, the shooters recognized several prior attackers as “saints,” including Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in Isla Vista, California, in 2014.
Matthew Kriner, executive director of the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism, explained that the San Diego suspects followed a well-established script. “The perpetrators filmed their activities in the same script that we’ve seen previous accelerationist attackers do,” Kriner said. “I think what we’re seeing right off the bat is a recreation of the Tarrant model of the ‘Saints attacker,’ wherein Tarrant provided himself as a cultural script.”
Elliot Chandler, a researcher at the Norway-based monitoring firm Revontulet, described the ideological underpinnings: “It is an ideology that is heavily invested in the idea of ‘cultural degeneracy’ and what are the sources of it. And historically, femininity and the excessive expression of femininity is a core aspect of degeneracy.”
A Dangerous Blind Spot in Counterterrorism Policy
The NPR investigation also highlights a critical policy gap. The Trump administration’s 2026 U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy, released May 6, makes no mention of far-right, neo-Nazi, or white supremacist threats. Instead, it focuses on narcoterrorists, Islamist terrorists, and “violent left-wing extremists.” As Foreign Policy reported, the document was overseen by White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka.
Colin Clarke, executive director of the Soufan Center, was blunt in his assessment. “Far-right terrorism is alive and well, but you wouldn’t know it from reading this document,” Clarke told NPR. “This is an unserious document written by unserious people about a deadly serious subject.” He warned that the omission has concrete consequences for resource allocation and prevention efforts, making the country less safe.
Juliette Kayyem, a homeland security expert at Harvard Kennedy School, wrote in The Atlantic that the attack exemplified a danger the administration would rather ignore. She noted that far-right extremism has proven more frequent and deadly than left-wing violence in recent years.
The Mainstreaming of Anti-Woman Rhetoric
The investigation situates the San Diego attack within a broader cultural trend. Helen Lewis’s June 2026 Atlantic cover story documents how extreme anti-woman rhetoric has moved from fringe online spaces to mainstream conservative discourse. Lewis argues that “masculinism” functions as “a perpetual-motion machine of grievance” that holds together the American right.
As Ms. Magazine reported, the shooters’ lengthy involvement in misogynist online communities — one suspect had been active in incel forums since 2022 — calls attention to the known problem of youth being exposed to supremacist content early on. DiBranco argued that this reflects a broader media blind spot: misogyny is so pervasive and normalized that it often fails to register as newsworthy, even when it is central to mass violence.
A Transnational Threat
Experts emphasize that this movement is not confined to the United States. Beirich noted that similar attacks inspired by the same ideology have occurred in Germany, Norway, New Zealand, Serbia, and Slovakia. The Christchurch attack alone provided the template for deadly shootings in El Paso, Texas; Buffalo, New York; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Jacksonville, Florida.
“These movements, they’re not confined by borders. They are truly transnational,” Beirich said.
What’s Next
The San Diego attack raises urgent questions about how law enforcement and counterterrorism agencies can better recognize misogyny as a potential indicator of broader extremist radicalization. With the current administration’s counterterrorism strategy explicitly omitting far-right threats, experts warn that the nation may be ill-equipped to prevent future attacks rooted in this increasingly dangerous intersection of hatreds.