Anti-semitism and misogyny in the alt-right : an anaylsis of 4chan posts in the days before and after two mass shootings

Abstract

This thesis investigates how hate speech on social media platforms emboldens men radicalized by the alt-right to commit in-person and virtual violence through two case studies. Alt-right members on 4chan glorify Elliot Rodger as “King of the Incels” after he killed six (not including himself) and injured fourteen, citing sexual rejection as his trigger. Robert Bowers demonstrated his anti-Semitic motive by shouted “All Jews must die” before he killed eleven and injured six in a Pittsburgh synagogue. Alt-right members commit in-person violence through physical assault and mass shootings. Alternatively, they violently “troll” their victims through stalking, violent intimidation, and death and rape threats. I provide an in-depth analysis of the cyclical and reinforcing relationship between social media and violence by examining the literature on social media and the alt-right’s recruitment and radicalization cycle before turning to the alt-right’s self-proclaimed home, 4chan’s ‘Politically Incorrect’ board. I crawled four datasets from 4chan/pol/ to determine if misogynistic and anti-Semitic rhetoric increases following misogynistic and anti-Semitic terrorist attacks. The dataset results demonstrate a change in frequency of statistically significant words following Elliot Rodger and Robert Bowers’ mass shootings.