Manosphere: “Misogyny has become a very lucrative business”

taz: Veronika Kracher, how do you deal with hate on the Internet?

Veronika Kracher: When you work in such an area, you either become the funniest person in the world or extremely depressed. It is important to develop resilience and find boundaries with work. What helps me above all is the experience of concrete political, feminist agency and solidarity among my comrades. This shows me that there are people who do not accept these conditions and want to change them.

taz: Why do young men become radicalized on the Internet?

Kracher: We live in patriarchally structured conditions in which male socialization is very strongly linked to the devaluation of the non-masculine. Anti-feminist influencers appeal to a crisis of masculinity and target young people with the promise of teaching them proper gender performance. Men push women and queer people out of the public eye and take up space for themselves. With hate messages or generating content in digital spaces, it has become much easier to perpetrate gender-based violence. This has arrived in the digital mainstream. The development is extremely scary. Misogyny has become a very lucrative business.

Born in 1990, she is a journalist and describes herself as an expert on harassing men on the Internet.

taz: Could the Manosphere function without capitalism?

Firecracker: Gender-based violence is independent of economic and political systems. However, the monetization of misogynistic violence is a phenomenon of capitalist platform logic. Users who read male are quickly flooded with anti-feminist content on platforms like Tiktok or Instagram. Platforms and the operators of social media apps produce technology designed to degrade women and make money from it. Tech monopolies push this content specifically. The safety of marginalized people is completely irrelevant when it comes to maximizing profits.

taz: Do you see a connection to the fascist rise?

Kracher: Definitely yes. Let's think of Maximilian Krah, who talks about how real men are on the right. Fascist organizations and structures specifically address an offended masculinity: everything used to be fine. You had a loyal, caring wife and children and could act as the sole breadwinner. Today that is not the case. The simple explanation is to use images of the enemy and reactionary, conspiracy-ideological explanations of the world, such as the “great exchange” or feminism. Instead of dealing with your own supremacy and how this is articulated in interpersonal relationships.

taz: Where should we start so that men do not resort to anti-feminist violence?

Kracher: I think exit programs are important. But we should take a much more fundamental approach when it comes to preventing gender-based violence. We need fundamentally feminist pedagogy and politics. An important aspect is that characteristics are no longer linked to gender.

“From alpha male to neo-Nazi – anti-feminist online radicalization”, October 20th, 7 p.m. in the Osnabrück adult education center, Bergstrasse 8, free entry

Firecracker: Boys need to be taught from an early age that they don't have to build their identity on devaluing other people. Misogyny is socially normalized. There needs to be a stronger awareness. It is bitter that the federal government is cutting funding across the board for structures that work against gender-specific violence. This signals that gender-based violence is not that important socially.