MI5 officers told an influential committee of MPs “there is a growing synergy between Incel and ERWT (Extreme Right Wing Terrorism) ideologies.”
But MI5 pointed out that Elliot Rodger—who shot and stabbed six people in Isla Vista, California, in 2014 before turning his gun on himself—was an example of Incel terrorism because his crime “was aimed at societal change.”
Rodger left a 137-page manifesto in which he vowed “to punish everyone who is sexually active,” but also went into detail about why he wanted to start a “war on women.”
Moments before he drove the van into shoppers on the pavement, Minassian went on the 4Chan message board and posted a “manifesto” in which he wrote: “Private (Recruit) Minassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt 4chan please. C23249161. The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”
MI5 ‘Struggle To Give Sense of Strategic Trend’
McCallum said: “It is not, as things stand, something we are seeing a huge crossover (with ERWT) into this territory but there is a crossover. It has cropped up from time to time but in slightly odd ways and I think we would struggle to give you any sense of a strategic trend here.”Jacob Davey at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told the committee there was “significant overlap between the growing online misogynist communities (sometimes called the ‘manosphere’) and right-wing extremist ideologies.”
In its evidence to the committee MI5 said: “Incel and white supremacist narratives can have many cross-cutting features, including tendencies towards a victimhood mindset, misogyny, and conspiratorial thinking (blaming of target-sets such as women, feminists, liberals, the Jewish community). Overlaps of Incel and right-wing grievances are therefore not unexpected.”
The report concluded that the threat of extreme right-wing terrorism was on an “upward trajectory” and said military personnel were often seen as potential recruits.
The committee, which is chaired by Conservative MP Julian Lewis, said: “Extreme right-wing terrorists often display an interest in military culture, weaponry, and the armed forces or law enforcement organisations. ... This leads both to individuals seeking to join the military, and groups seeking to recruit within the military.”
The report went on to say, “The fact that the armed forces do not provide clear direction to service personnel regarding membership of any organisation—let alone an extremist one—would appear to be something of an anomaly.”
In January 2020 the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre predicted: “It is likely that right-wing terrorists globally will aspire to carry out high-impact attacks that will have a similar resonance in the right-wing community to Brenton Tarrant’s Christchurch attack [in March 2019, when 51 people were killed at two mosques in New Zealand].”
Then, in June 2021, the Homeland Security Group said: “Our understanding of the future trajectory of the extreme right-wing terrorism threat is aligned with views of operational partners and our international partners; the threat is likely to increase over the next five years, with economic decline caused by COVID-19 being a likely driver of increased threat.”
The report also stated there was some evidence of Russian state support for extremist right-wing groups in the UK, likely to be driven by “a bid to fuel divisions and increase socio-political discord.”
