Islamism and right-wing extremism | Incels with and without God

Barrier and flowers at a makeshift memorial site at the scene of the Islamist CSD attack on July 25, 2026 in Berlin's Tiergarten Photo: VISUM/Stefan Boness No matter how feminist and progressive the Left party may appear, Manuel Ostermann has seen through it. The head of the German Police Union (DPolG), which positions itself reliably to the right of the Police Union (GdP), sounded the alarm shortly before the election for the Berlin House of Representatives: With a left-wing mayor, Berlin could become an "Islamist capital," the "Bild" quoted him as saying on September 19th. Since the Die Linke party became the strongest force the next day, there has been no stopping: bourgeois politicians and the media are rolling over themselves with horror scenarios, admonishing and warning the SPD and the Greens that Islamists and criminal clans could benefit if Die Linke appoints the mayor because they reject general suspicion based on origin and family name and want to make naturalization easier.

The focus of the campaign is the Berlin district of Neukölln, where a particularly large number of people of Arab origin who are affected by racism live - and where Palestine solidarity plays an important role in the local branch of the Left; sometimes more emotional, more radical and less differentiated than in the party as a whole. The Berlin Left is therefore accused of anti-Semitism and a lack of distance from Islamist actors - the right-wing extremist AfD has pushed itself into the front row of accusers. Actual Islamists are also more right-wing in the sense of being reactionary. Or?

The debate about the relationship between right-wing extremism and Islamism is not new, but it has flared up again after the attack on the Berlin CSD. The first reports of an incident at Berlin's Christopher Street Day on July 25, 2026 only mentioned injuries and a vehicle that crashed into the crowd. Many immediately thought of an attack and asked themselves: Islamist or right-wing extremist? After the shock of the attack, which a 65-year-old woman did not survive, and the probable Islamist motive behind the crime becoming known, the question was soon discussed: Why "or"?

Can Islamists in Germany simply be described as right-wing or right-wing extremist “just” because they also hate women, gays, and Jews? The AfD would vehemently deny this because the left, with its anti-racism, is to blame for the presence of Muslims in general and therefore also for Islamist attacks. Parts of the left, on the other hand, take up the thesis that Islamism and right-wing extremism are "evil twins" because both ideologies despise democracy and diversity - as the political scientist and journalist Düzen Tekkal wrote in a guest article for "Welt" in 2020.

This was recently contradicted by the left-wing video blogger and author Fabian Lehr, who warned against inaccuracies and wrong priorities when it comes to defending oneself against accusations of cronyism with Islamists. He did not fundamentally deny that Islamism is right-wing extremism - but it is not a "twin" of national right-wing extremism and also not an equivalent threat to "our freedom" in Germany.

Islamism and “secular European right-wing extremism with a fascist character” have similarities in their misogyny and homophobia, but otherwise have incompatible goals. Lehr emphasized on his YouTube channel that they do not need to be fought with equal urgency in Germany, as Islamists have no realistic chance of coming to power here.

The latter makes sense: After all, there is no Islamist party that receives approval ratings of 29.5 percent of eligible voters nationwide in surveys and is "fighted" by government parties by accommodating them in terms of content and hoping that the original will not be elected. The largest illegal war and firearms depots discovered by the police in recent years did not come from Islamists either - some of them were found in connection with Nazi memorabilia, as was the case with a 60-year-old lawyer in Remscheid in October 2025.

While 6.6 to seven million Muslims live in Germany, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) counts 28,645 people in the Islamist spectrum. The fact that around 9,110 of them are considered "violence-oriented" and 410 are considered "threats" is actually frightening, but it is far from enough for a takeover of power.

But does that mean they are not worth mentioning as political opponents? Some on the left find it difficult to name them as such. This difficulty also lies in the fact that they see Islamism and its anti-Western radicalization in Germany and Central Europe - also or above all - as a reaction to racist exclusion. They point to the power imbalance between racist politicians and officials on the one hand and marginalized people who seek salvation in a reactionary ideology on the other.

It is wrong to pretend that Islamism in Germany is just a reaction to racism.

In addition, political Islam does not rely on national borders and wants to missionize and incorporate people regardless of their skin color - Fabian Lehr also points out this. As much as Islamism is determined by other forms of group-related misanthropy, racism does not play a major role here. Rather, Islamists try to benefit from structural racism and everyday racism in Germany by targeting and recruiting marginalized people in search of a strong community. But they also recruit men whose main problem is not racism, but the loss of male privileges - some of them are also affected by racism, others are white, German converts.

That's why it's wrong to pretend that Islamism in Germany is just a reaction to racism and that leftists can only fight Islamism indirectly through anti-racism. In fact, Islamist attackers are providing election campaign support for the AfD. In this respect, one danger increases the other.

In any case, there are more similarities in the image of women and families of Islamists and the German nationalist right than between that of Islamists and the left. Perhaps the motivation of some Islamists in Western societies is even a religious variant of the right-wing “incel” ideology, whose representatives see themselves robbed of their male privileges through feminism and queer emancipation.

While researching her book "Incels: History, Language and Ideology of an Online Cult" and corresponding specialist articles, Veronika Kracher came across Internet forums in the "Manosphere" in which both the Norwegian racist and mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik and the jihadist Omar Shafik Hammami were worshiped as heroes. As an alleged defender of Christianity, Breivik railed against feminism and "cultural Marxism" as well as against "Islamization" in his "manifesto." But some "incels" - the acronym stands for "involuntary celibate" - find it difficult to decide under which flag they should fight for their goal of dividing women up like a resource.

“Another type of man who is fond of incels is the Islamist holy warrior,” wrote Veronika Kracher in the magazine “Phase 2” in 2020. In relevant forums, users pondered "whether the caliphate was not the fulfillment of the goals of their 'Incel Rebellion' and whether Islam was not the appropriately warlike religion to defend itself against feminism, Jews and gender mainstreaming." According to Kracher, a forum called “Truecels.org” that was useful for this research was blocked in the course of her work on the article.

The admiration of right-wing men for Islamism becomes visible when political opponents once again want gang rape.

Sometimes, even outside of such special forums, the secret admiration of right-wing German men for actual or alleged Islamists shines through. Although they were confronted with war, civil war or extreme poverty in their countries of origin, at least they were not tormented by “wokism” and feminism on a daily basis. This recognition becomes visible, for example, when political opponents are once again asked to be gang raped.

AfD dropout Franziska Schreiber also had this experience when she went public with the warning against her former party. “They wish I would be raped by refugees,” she said in an interview with the T-Online news portal in 2018. Left-wing women who take part in online discussions or write articles are also familiar with such statements or innuendos. There is no differentiation between refugees in general, Muslims in general and Islamists. The admiration and envy of such “haters” for the presumably unadulterated patriarchal socialization of men from the Near and Middle East is palpable.

There are communities from this region that have changed significantly in the last few decades and are sometimes far more progressive than the German regulars' table. When a male prisoner in Iran was dressed in women's clothing for public humiliation in 2013, Kurdish men around the world - including older ones - showed solidarity by uploading photos of themselves in women's clothing for an online protest. The women's protests following the death of the Iranian Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini in the hands of the "morality police" in 2022 supported numerous young men in Iran despite the risk to their lives. Some of them were sentenced to death and executed by the mullahs' regime for allegedly rioting at demonstrations.

Many Kurdish men have daughters, sisters or cousins ​​who risked their lives or died in the armed struggle against the terrorist militia "Islamic State" (IS) - and have permanently changed the entire family's image of women. Characteristic floral scarves, like those worn by many anti-IS fighters with their uniform, are now also common among men from the region. Neukölln left-wing politician Ferat Koçak also often wears such a scarf.

But right-wing German men are not interested in such subtleties - and they would perhaps be even more afraid of such women than of Muslim men who fit their stereotype. This fear is at the same time a connecting element between right-wing extremism and Islamism: "The fear of loss of supposedly natural privileges and power imbalances that comes with the rejection of modernity is just as fundamental in right-wing extremism as in political Islam," wrote Anetta Kahane, the chairwoman of the left-liberal Amadeu Antonio Foundation, in the foreword to the brochure "Women-Hating Online Subcultures" from 2021.

For Islamists living in Germany, the fact that they consciously or unconsciously want to take revenge for the racism of the majority society can play a role in their radicalization. This may be especially true when anger over actual racism mixes with frustration over a “no” from Western women and their sexual self-determination is interpreted as just further racist humiliation. But racism does not explain why white converts to Islam are sometimes particularly radical and that there were even Salafist groups in Germany with white, Western-educated spokesmen like Pierre Vogel and Sven Lau.

It also does not explain why someone like Martin Lemke from Saxony-Anhalt joined the terrorist militia “Islamic State” in 2014. The fact that he was able to marry three women in Syria perhaps explains it more. At least he could still “be someone” there as a man. The fact that his wives were also converts can be read as an Islamic “tradwife” variant.

In any case, the one-dimensional explanation of Islamism as a reaction to racist humiliation falls short. It is also dangerous from an anti-racist perspective and could inadvertently raise general suspicion because every person with a family background in the Middle East is potentially affected by racism in Germany. But not all of these people are susceptible to Islamism - some of them have fled Islamists themselves.

Right-wing extremist attitudes and resentments can also exist independently of a timely, realistic power option. The latter is a crucial difference between ethnic right-wing extremists in this country and Islamists. In addition, the radicalization of young Muslims who become Islamists in Germany does not always begin in the backyards or in chat groups of marginalized people, but sometimes in neat mosques that are financed by foreign states - as in the case of the Turkish-Islamic Union of the Institution for Religion (Ditib), which is considered the "long arm" of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

It is therefore a NATO partner that influences Muslims living in Germany in an Islamist manner, exploiting their experience of racism in order to present itself as their patron saint, while fighting the secular and left-wing opposition in its own country as well as the Kurdish minority. Last year, the Kurdish Community of Germany, among others, warned about radicalization through Ditib. V., after the head of the Turkish religious authority Diyanet, Ali Erbaş, publicly called for “jihad in all forms” at a conference in Istanbul.

It is clear who benefits from the radicalization of young Muslims in Germany: the AfD and authoritarian law-and-order politicians from other parties who exploit their crimes to propagate "remigration" and the surveillance state.

In other respects, the proud “car country” of Germany makes it easy for potential assassins – the sheer mass of vehicles that can be converted into weapons weighing tons at any time is politically desirable and part of “our” cultural identity. But both Islamists and misogynists with no apparent religious background have repeatedly used cars, minibuses and trucks as weapons for attacks on groups of people around the world.

In 2019, Alek Minassian confessed in a Canadian court that he had killed ten people in a pickup truck in Toronto the previous year because, in his eyes, they were “Chads and Stacys,” as the incel scene calls sexually active young men and women. The then 26-year-old said that he had never had a girlfriend and was inspired to commit the crime by the Internet subculture. Incels feel disadvantaged because they don't look like "alpha men" - and women assume that they only want them. However, they themselves usually rate women and girls very strictly based on their appearance, often on a scale of one to ten. In the Swiss canton of Thurgau, then 28-year-old Kevin B. intentionally ran over two schoolgirls on September 11, 2020, seriously injuring them. “The information we had on this case led us to the conclusion that incel ideology was a possible motive for the crime,” it said later in an analysis by the Swiss federal police FedPol, which the investigative department of the Swiss broadcaster “SRF” reported on in 2025.

The social scientist and former prison psychologist Götz Eisenberg also speaks of "male self-esteem prostheses" in connection with vehicle attacks - the aggressive car cult of right-wing and right-wing conservative men is therefore part of a problem of violence that is not limited to one cultural group. “Just as certain dogs are not animals, but rather the externalized aggression potential of their owners, certain cars are not means of transportation, but painted attack dogs that their drivers let loose on one another,” Eisenberg wrote in the online magazine “Telepolis” in 2021.

The political scientist Cara Daggett is also familiar with this phenomenon from supporters of US President Donald Trump and has called it “petromasculinity” because of the preferred use of fossil fuels. In Germany, AfD supporters also attach great importance to this - and often respond to criticism from climate activists on the Internet with threats, insults and rape fantasies. This also makes it clear what unites white, western right-wing extremists and Islamists: they are, not least, storm troops of the patriarchy, united in their hatred of women and queer people.