Female Influencers of the Far-Right
Women at the forefront of extremist radicalization
Cassandra Teulon
February 5, 2023
Credit: DALL-E
Lana Lokteff is a self-proclaimed far-right white supremacist and antisemitic conspiracy theorist. As a co-host of alt-media outlet Red Ice and a prominent Twitter personality, Lokteff advocates for women join the far-right movement. Her anti-feminist sentiments conflate femininity with subservience, suggesting it is women’s innate role to motivate their male leaders fighting for the liberties of white civilization.
Lokteff is the female speaker at the ninth Identitarian Ideas conference, an international far-right convention.
“Women are the key to the future of European countries, not only as life givers, but as the force that inspires men,” she said at the conference. “What really drives men is women, and let’s be honest, sex with women.”
Among the social-political circles of white supremacy and misogyny, female voices are becoming increasingly pronounced in far-right propaganda.
On November 23rd, the Queen’s chapter of the National Organization for Women in International Security (WIIS) held a speakers panel to facilitate far-reaching conversations about North American far-right extremism through a gendered lens.
In light of amplified extremist threats and violence, Alexandra Burns, events and logistics director of the Queen’s University WIIS chapter, shared the importance of having conversations about the gendered impacts of far-right movements.
“There’s a tendency to dehumanize and demonize members of extremist groups, but it just creates even bigger barriers between activists for human rights and radicalized groups. Bringing people together to make space for dialogue is the first step to combatting radicalization,” Burns said.
Event speakers included Dr. Carmen Celestini, professor of Religious Studies at the University of Waterloo and Dr. Amarnath Amarasingam, assistant professor in Queen’s University’s Religious and Political Studies programs.
Fae Johnstone joined the panel, executive director and co-owner of Wisdom2Action, a social consulting firm based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
While women’s presence in far-right extremist movements is not historically new, the influence of social media has shifted female roles to the forefront of radicalization. With the introduction of women as far-right “social media influencers,” white women have been weaponized to make hateful messaging more palatable for mainstream audiences.
Female contributions to far-right movements have historically been positioned in the domestic sphere. For example, Hitler’s institution of the ‘Gold Mother’s Cross’ in 1938 celebrated German mothers with eight or more Aryan children for their contribution to raising the next population of the Third Reich.
Amarasingham illustrated how past motherhood and white reproduction celebrations urged women to “embrace their true role as a woman – stay home and give birth to the next revolution of fighters.”
“[Women in the far-right] have evolved into propagandists,” explained Amarasingam.
Using predominantly white female voices to spread far-right ideology dodges critiques of misogyny and toxic masculinity, suggesting that extremist ideology cannot be anti-feminist if it garners female support.
“Framing far-right extremist values as an element of womanhood creates an argument that we have not expected, it creates an argument we are not used to working with,” said Johnstone.
Angry, middle-aged men have become the stereotypical spokesperson for far-right radicalization. But female extremist ‘influencers’ provide an alternative entry point to recruit female audiences, shrinking the gender gap in alt-right spaces.
“Gendered identities come with implicit gendered assumptions. Extremist messaging is received differently when said by a woman. These young white women are now very well positioned to start the radicalization process,” noted Johnstone.
Amarasingam and Johnstone argued that this feminine reframing of extremist values has alarming online consequences. Social media creates echo chambers that endanger anti-hate activists, especially under Elon Musk’s new online guidelines following his acquisition of Twitter.
“Now that Twitter is without guardrails and without real protective mechanisms, it is going to be a very different online space for the far-right,” said Amarasingam.
Failing to curb the proliferation of extremist ideology online exposes more young women and girls to the manipulative recruitment strategies employed by far-right groups. With the expansion of online extremist participation spreading across gendered lines, the threat of violence against racialized groups is as profound as ever.
WIIS Queen’s is hosting their fifth annual conference, titled Women in Conflict: Survivors, Soldiers, and Peacebuilders, on March 11th. Conference tickets can be purchased online with a portion of the cost being donated Dawn House Women Services in Kingston.