Incels waging ‘war against women’ and pose ’emerging threat to children’, study finds
Warning: this article contains terms and references readers may find offensive.
The incel movement is waging a “war against women” and poses a growing threat to children, according to a report that calls on tech companies to intervene to stop the radicalisation of lonely men and boys online.
The incel – or “involuntarily celibate” – movement is an online subculture involving men who feel unable to have sex or find love and express hostility and extreme resentment towards women.
Research into the leading incel forum found a “community of angry, belligerent and unapologetic” men that poses a “clear and present danger” to women and an “emerging threat to children”.
Users posted about rape every 29 minutes and the forum’s rules were changed six months ago to accommodate paedophilia.
More than a fifth of posts featured misogynist, racist, antisemitic or anti-LGBTQ language, with 16% of posts featuring misogynist slurs, the study said.
On the forum Sky News found posts saying “women should be sex slaves” and “I feel hate when I see a girl”.
The study of more than one million posts over 18 months found that posts mentioning mass murders increased by 59%.
Perpetrators of mass shootings are known to have been active in incel communities or discuss their ideas, including the Plymouth gunman Jake Davison, who killed five people including a three-year-old girl.
Researchers warned that “unchecked, incel communities have the potential to radicalise further” and called on tech companies to act.
Jake Davison carried out the UK’s deadliest mass shooting since 2010
‘Not lone wolves’
Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a British non-profit group which carried out the study, said: “Incels are not lone wolves or socially isolated.
“They are in fact enmeshed in highly active communities with a coherent, evolving ideology that has radicalised further in the past 18 months.
“They are egging each other on to commit mass violence, normalising sexual violence against women and even codified their approval of sexualising children.”
‘Power-users’
The research was conducted by “scraping” forum posts and analysing members’ activity, trends and keywords.
The forum received an average of 2.6 million monthly visits, with 17,118 members. In the 18 months covered, only 4,057 wrote posts.
Almost half (43.8%) of traffic to the forum came from the US, with 7.5% from the UK.
Discourse is driven by 406 “power-users”, who produce 74.6% of all posts, some spending more than 10 hours a day on the forum.
The forum’s rules were changed in March from “do not sexualise minors” to “do not sexualise pre-pubescent minors”.
Incel content on YouTube
The study found that forum users most frequently shared content from YouTube, where incel channels have more than 136,000 subscribers and 24.2 million video views.
Davison subscribed to an incel content channel that YouTube has refused to take down despite public pressure, the CCDH researchers said.
Another channel posts videos of women covertly filmed in London.
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The CCDH urged YouTube to take down all incel channels and called on Google to push “incelosphere” websites down search results.
Mr Ahmed said: “We find in this study a reflexive dynamic between misogynistic communities online and incels.
“They argue with each other, support each other, share ideas, promote each other’s lexicon and values. In short, they are brothers-in-arms in a war against women.
“That’s why a small subculture, numbering in the thousands, has had such an enormous effect.”
Sky News has asked YouTube for comment.
‘Not all violent’
Dr Lewys Brace, a senior lecturer at Exeter University specialising in online extremist radicalisation, including incel culture, told Sky News that he agreed with the study’s recommendations.
“The thing that concerns me personally most about this incel movement, is that people don’t actually need to look for this stuff to get to it,” he said.
Although he said that some people in the community posed a real threat to others, he stressed most are not violent.
“Obviously not everyone in this community is violent,” he said. “In fact, my research has shown that actual violent conversations are the minority of conversations on these platforms.”
The problem for law enforcement is telling the difference between someone acting out on the internet and someone who poses a threat, he said.
He added: “For me, the ones that concern me are the ones that take these ideas, and they’ve written long posts where they’ve integrated these ideas with their own personal offline experiences.”
Given the example of Davison posting long YouTube videos featuring incel ideas, Dr Brace said: “That’s exactly it. Those are exactly the kind of examples we should be concerned about.”
The Home Office is looking at what Denmark is doing to cut illegal migration, Sky News understands.
Last month, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood dispatched officials to the Nordic nation to study its border control and asylum policies, which are considered some of the toughest in Europe.
In particular, officials are understood to be looking at Denmark’s tighter rules on family reunion and restricting most refugees to a temporary stay in the country.
Ms Mahmood will announce a major shake-up of the UK’s immigration system later this month, PA is reporting.
Labour MPs are said to be split on the move.
Some, in so-called Red Wall seats which are seen as vulnerable to challenge from Reform UK, want ministers to go further in the direction Denmark has taken.
But others believe the policies will estrange progressive voters and push the Labour Party too far to the right.
It comes as the government continues to struggle to get immigration under control, with rising numbers of small boat crossings in the Channel over the last few months and a migrant, deported under the UK’s returns deal with France, re-entering the country.
Some 648 people crossed the Channel to Britain in nine boats on Friday, according to Home Office figures, bringing the total for the year to 38,223.
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Ms Mahmood wants deterrents in place to stop migrants seeking to enter the country via unauthorised routes.
She also wants to make it easier to remove those who are found to have no right to stay in the UK.
Sources told the PA news agency she was eager to meet her Danish counterpart, Rasmus Stoklund, the country’s immigration minister, at the earliest possible convenience.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. Pic: PA
Speaking on BBC Radio 4, Mr Stoklund likened Danish society to “the hobbits in The Lord Of The Rings” and said people coming to the country who do not contribute positively would not be welcome.
Mr Stoklund said: “We are a small country. We live peacefully and quietly with each other. I guess you could compare us to the hobbits in The Lord Of The Rings.”
“We expect people who come here to participate and contribute positively, and if they don’t they aren’t welcome.”
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The split in Labour was apparent from public comments by MPs today.
Stoke-on-Trent Central Labour MP Gareth Snell told Radio 4’s Today programme that any change bringing “fairness” to an asylum system that his constituents “don’t trust” was “worth exploring”.
But Nottingham East MP Nadia Whittome, who is a member of the party’s Socialist Campaign Group caucus, said: “I think these are policies of the far right. I don’t think anyone wants to see a Labour government flirting with them.”
It started with a strong espresso in a simple cafe on a side street in north London.
Several Algerian men were inside, a few others were outside on the pavement, smoking.
I’d been told the wanted prisoner might be in Finsbury Park, so I ordered a coffee and asked if they’d seen him.
Spotting a man resembling the suspect, Tom and camera operator Josh Masters gave chase
They were happy to tell me that some of them knew Brahim Kaddour-Cherif – the 24-year-old offender who was on the run.
One of the customers revealed to me that he’d actually seen him the night before.
“He wants to hand himself to police,” the friend said candidly.
This was the beginning of the end of a high-profile manhunt.
The Algerian convicted sex offender had been at large since 29 October, after he was mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth in south London.
Within an hour of meeting the friend in the cafe, he had followed myself and camera operator Josh Masters to a nearby street.
Kaddour-Cherif was accidentally freed five days after the wrongful release of convicted sex offender Hadush Kebatu (pictured). They were both arrested separately in Finsbury Park. Pic: Crown Prosecution Service/PA
We weren’t yet filming – he didn’t want any attention or fuss surrounding him.
“Follow me, he’s in the park,” the man told me.
“Follow – but not too close.”
We did.
I was in the same park a few weeks ago after fugitive Hadush Kebatu, the Ethiopian sex offender – also wrongly released from prison – was arrested in Finsbury Park.
It was odd to be back in the same spot in such similar circumstances.
Read more on Tom’s story:
Wrongly released prisoner’s angry reaction
‘I’m glad he’s been arrested‘
As he led us through the park past joggers, young families and people playing tennis, the man headed for the gates near Finsbury Park station.
All of a sudden, two police officers ran past us.
The Met had received a tip-off from a member of the public.
It was frantic. Undercover officers, uniformed cops, screeching tyres and blaring sirens. We were in the middle of the manhunt.
As they scoured the streets at speed, we walked by some of the Algerian men I’d seen in the cafe.
Kaddour-Cherif walked up to a nearby police van as Tom continued to question him
One man near the group was wearing green tracksuit bottoms, a beanie hat and had glasses on.
“It’s him, it’s him,” one of the other men said to me, gesturing towards him.
The man in the beanie then quickly turned on his heel and walked off.
“It’s him, it’s him,” another guy agreed.
The suspect was walking off while the police were still searching the nearby streets.
Josh and I caught up with him and I asked directly: “Are you Brahim?”
You may have watched the exchange in the Sky News video – he was in denial, evasive and pretended the suspect had pedalled off on a Lime bike.
I can only guess he knew the game was up, but for whatever reason, he was keeping up the lie.
Police moved in to handcuff him and used their phones to check an image of the wanted man from one of Sky News’ online platforms
Once his identity was confirmed, Kaddour-Cherif was put into the back of the police van
Moments later, one of the bystanders told me “it is him” – with added urgency.
Only the prisoner knows why he then walked up to the nearby police van – officers quickly moved to handcuff him and tell him why he was being arrested.
Over the next 10 minutes, he became agitated. His story changed as I repeatedly asked if he had been the man inside HMP Wandsworth.
Officers needed confirmation too – one quickly pulled out a smartphone and checked an image of the wanted man from one of Sky News’ online platforms.
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When Tom first caught up with him, Kaddour-Cherif claimed the culprit had left on a Lime bike
“It’s not my f****** fault, they release me!” he yelled at me.
The search was over, the prisoner cage in the back of the van was opened and he was guided in.
I then spoke to another Algerian man who had tipped off the police – he told me he hated sex offenders and the shame he felt over the whole episode.
The community had done the right thing – there were two tip-offs – one to me, one to the police.
The farce of this manhunt had gone on long enough.
UK
Nadjib, who tipped off police over released prisoner Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, tells Sky News he’s ‘happy to see him arrested’
“It’s him, it’s him, it’s him”, the man told me urgently.
While police were frantically searching in Finsbury Park for wanted sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, locals were telling me where he was.
Immediately after the dramatic arrest, filmed exclusively by Sky News we spoke to the North African man who tipped off the police.
Sky News filmed Brahim Kaddour-Cherif’s rearrest
Nadjib had been on the lookout for the convicted sex offender, who had been spending time in different parts of north London since his release from HMP Wandsworth.
He even had a folded-up newspaper clipping in his pocket so that he could check the picture himself.
He told Sky News he was “very happy when he got arrested”.
“I don’t like the sex offenders,” he said.
“I know him from the community. He has been around here every night since he was released from prison.”
Nadjib (L) told Sky’s Tom Parmenter he had been looking out for the offender
Not only did he tip the police off about the prisoner’s whereabouts, but he also witnessed the other high-profile manhunt that ended in the same park last month.
Ethiopian asylum seeker Hadush Kebatu was also arrested in Finsbury Park after a 48-hour manhunt in the capital. He was then deported to Ethiopia.
Brahim Kaddour-Cherif
“When he [Kebatu] got arrested in the park I was there,” Nadjib said.
I asked him why both men ended up in the same park in north London.
“Because the community, he came here for the community of Algerians,” he said.
Several Algerian people that I spoke to on Friday told me how shameful they thought it was that this sex offender was still on the run.
“Job done,” Nadjib said, before walking off.
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