Hold Them Down: The Gendered Roots of Violent Extremism

In this lecture, Professor Cynthia Miller-Idriss demonstrates how ordinary and everyday forms of sexist, misogynist, and anti-LGBTQ+ harm normalize and help mainstream extremist, xenophobic, and nationalist violence, in part by introducing or strengthening exclusionary ideas about national purity, degradation, and degeneracy that are racist and dehumanizing. Miller-Idriss first reviews five ways that gender shapes radicalization and mobilization to extremist violence– containment, punishment, exploitation, erasure, and enabling. The main part of the lecture then focuses on the first tactic, containment, showing how ordinary and everyday forms of sexism and misogyny open pathways to more virulent ideologies and fertile ground for violent ideas and mobilization to take root and thrive. The lecture draws on three brief case studies: online gaming, memes and short form video, and self-help forums and influencers. Ultimately, Miller-Idriss argues, it is impossible to understand the rise of the modern far right or nationalist violence more broadly without recognizing how it is fundamentally gendered. 

This event is organized by CEU’s Department of History and CEU’s Nationalism Studies Program and presented by CEU in cooperation with the European Forum Alpbach.

Public Lecture – Hold Them Down: The Gendered Roots of Violent Extremism

Registration required

Datum: 07.05.2024, 17:30 – 19:00 Uhr

Ort: Central European University (CEU), Auditorium
Quellenstraße 51-55, 1100 Wien, Österreich

Url: https://events.ceu.edu/2024-05-07/hold-them-down-gendered-roots-violent-extremism