The most extreme violence of the anti-abortion movement has long been understood in law enforcement and academia as a form of single-issue terrorism – political violence committed in the name of an isolated cause, disconnected from broader social, political or religious goals. But this categorization oversimplifies the strategic vision of many anti-abortion extremists and obscures the ideological and material interconnectivity they share with other hard-right movements. The anti-abortion bomber Eric Rudolph, for example, targeted two abortion clinics, a lesbian nightclub and the 1996 Summer Olympics in protest of what he called “the abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand” and, notably, “the ideals of global socialism.” He also held extreme antisemitic, white supremacist and antigovernment beliefs. This link between anti-abortion extremism and other types of far-right ideas is evident today, nearly three decades after Rudolph’s deadly bombing campaign. A new Hatewatch analysis – based on a monthlong sample of posts on the anonymous message board 4chan – reveals an interest beyond regulating abortion among a significant number of users who posted comments about abortion. It demonstrates a strong correlation with the desire to punish women, conceal the existence of trans people, control the ability of nonwhite people to have families, stoke fear and violence against Jewish people, and impose Christian supremacy on everyone. 4chan is known for its racist and misogynistic online trolling culture and its role in the formation of the “alt-right,” a version of the white nationalist movement that came to prominence during the 2010s. Southern Poverty Law Center researchers used Pyrra, a threat intelligence platform, to generate a sample of posts throughout the month of December 2023 that included key words associated with abortion. The 3,100 posts were then manually reviewed to confirm that each was discussing abortion. The process excluded irrelevant posts, such as when abortion was being used as an insult. This resulted in a general sample of 2,636 relevant posts made across 47 different boards on 4chan. The board “/pol/” (politically incorrect) accounted for 44.6% of all posts in the final sample. (…) Approximately 18% of posts discussing abortion included misogynistic language, including statements expressing belief in women’s inherent inferiority, gendered slurs and terminology specific to the manosphere, a virtual network of male supremacist communities. Also: The majority (64.2%) of posts within this sample opposed abortion – twice as likely as the entire sample. Misogyny was the most likely of the four types of hate analyzed to appear alongside other kinds of hate, such as racism or antisemitism. This finding is in line with previous research, such as a 2022 Marcon Institute poll which found that strong support for male supremacist beliefs significantly predicted white nationalist anti-abortion views.
via splcentr: ANTI-ABORTION RHETORIC ON 4CHAN STRETCHES BEYOND SINGLE-ISSUE EXTREMISM