Politico-ideologies of Misogynist Incels: A Shared Reproduction of Hegemonic Political Structures as ‘Incel’ Within and Beyond the Forum

While feminist scholars have illustrated how misogynist incels are yet another form of patriarchal re-enactment, there are still debates on whether misogynist incels have an ideology of their own. This paper contributes to our understanding of politico-ideological (re)production in the misogynist incel community, and Western reactionary politics writ-large. The paper aims to (re)situate the misogynist incel in our everyday context, thus seeing how it interacts and/or reinforces hegemonic political structures. The paper takes a critical look at debates in the literature on misogynist incel ideology, arguing that the debate around incel ideology might be a distraction from the politico-ideological structural roots of the misogynist incel community. This paper thus questions if there is a specific incel ideology by illustrating how ‘incel ideology’ reproduces familiar hegemonic Western politico-ideologies and structures, particularly imperial white supremacist capitalist cis-heteropatriarchy. In turn, this paper argues that the concept of ‘incel ideology’ may instead tell us about the continuing reproduction of imperial white supremacist capitalist cis-heteropatriarchy: the paper thus contends that by subsuming imperial white supremacist capitalist cis-heteropatriarchy into ‘incel ideology’, we displace misogynist incels from our Western hegemonic politico-ideological context. To illustrate the reproduction of these societal power structures, the paper analyses the reproduction of racialised (cis- and trans-) misogyny in one of the most populated misogynist incel communities.