On the evening of February 19th 2020, a shooter opened fire at a shisha bar and a kiosk in Hanau, Germany killing nine people and injuring more. After the attack, the suspect apparently returned to his home, killed his mother, and committed suicide. He shared a manifesto detailing the racist and supremacist background of the attack. While the main focus of much of the coverage in German and international media has been the perpetrator’s blatant far-right and xenophobic motivations, several articles have focused on the misogyny present in the manifesto by the Hanau shooter.

While this connection between white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and anti-feminism is new to the German discussion, it gained increased attention in international media after several recent attacks in North America. Since 2014, a number of attacks have been committed by men motivated by resentment at their lack of romantic or sexual relationships, the core of a misogynist ideology that has developed through online “incel” (“involuntarily celibate”) communities that also tend toward conspiracy theories and nihilism. Earlier in 2019, anti-feminism and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories also played a role in the far-right terrorist attack in Germany targeting a synagogue in Halle. The shooter blamed low birth rates in the West on feminism, intertwining this with a perceived threat from mass immigration, a common conspiracy theory known as the “Great Replacement”.

As scholars working on different aspects of male supremacism, we appreciate the new focus and attentiveness that is given in the broader media landscape to the significance of gender and misogyny in relation to (right-wing) extremist attacks. However, there are certain caveats we would like to share regarding the ways in which incels were discussed in the wake of the Hanau shooting, with some media outlets quick to term the perpetrator an incel. There is a danger of trivializing the relevance of how misogyny, male entitlement, and white supremacy are deeply linked within a violent belief system.