'Pink-pilling' tactics used by far right to recruit women

Misogyny and male supremacy might lie at the heart of far-right ideology but that does not mean women are absent from such movements with some caught up in the race riots that exploded across the UK this summer.

- MAYA OPPENHEIM

Author and journalist Lois Shearing has delved into the growing role that women play in far-right, neo-Nazi and white nationalist movements in her new book Pink-Pilled: Women and the Far Right.

Speaking to The Independent in the lead-up to the book’s release this February, Ms Shearing argues such movements are wielding a range of “cunning tactics” to radicalise women online. The author argues encountering transphobic, anti-immigrant views and Islamophobic views can lead to women being radicalised into the far right.

In the course of her research, Ms Shearing sought to consume the “digital diet” of a young woman who was being radicalised online. The investigative journalist spent 18 months using a fake identity to investigate far-right communities on forums, Facebook groups, Telegram channels, Instagram, X (Twitter), Pinterest, Tumblr, and other lesser-known platforms.

The author labels the process whereby women get drawn into the far right as “pink-pilling”, adding that it has parallels with the radicalisation process their male counterparts undergo. “There are different routes that women come through – anti-feminism is a really big route for women – that surprised me quite a lot,” she says. “They are similar to the manosphere. There are a lot of women who feel really frustrated with society and they blame feminism for that.”