Biden’s DHS funds grant at Arizona State’s McCain Institute to undermine ‘manosphere,’ claims anti-feminist ideas are a terrorist threat | The Post Millennial
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Biden’s DHS funds grant at Arizona State’s McCain Institute to undermine ‘manosphere,’ claims anti-feminist ideas are a terrorist threat
Hatred of masculinity and masculine tendencies are at the core of the kind of feminism DHS is pushing on the public with the funding of this grant.
Biden's Department of Homeland Security under DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has a granting program in place to fund "targeted violence and terrorism prevention." While that title would indicate that the grant is in line with the mission of DHS, in practice, the goal of this $20 million granting program was, in part, to prevent the "radicalization of men" and to "divert them away" from online "misogyny."
Hatred of masculinity and masculine tendencies are at the core of the kind of feminism DHS is pushing on the public with the funding of this grant. Congress has scheduled a hearing on to discuss the impeachment of Mayorkas for early January. This grant is among many funded by DHS to research online discourse, to the tune of millions of dollars.
DHS gave a grant of $659,327 to the CP3 Sustainment Program managed by the McCain Institute at Arizona State University with the plan being "to reach a minimum of 700,000 men at-risk of radicalization." The program is called Diverting Hate and it was developed "to prevent an uncommited population of young men from falling down misogynistic rabbit holes."
"The Diverting Hate team will identify the audience on Twitter and produce an understanding of the Incel community and manosphere within this ecosystem," the "logic model" of the proposal reads. They state that their "our activities and outputs will lead to a deeper understanding of the Incel community and the manosphere on Twitter at large, including narratives, key influencers, and significant events."
Diverting Hate Program Logic Model
The priorities of the program are "addressing online aspects of terrorism and targeted violence," and "preventing domestic violent extremism." To do this, they are focusing on men online. They are not, apparently, focusing on trans or gender diverse discourse despite recent mass shootings carried out by members of the LGBTQ community, such as the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, the Perry High School shooting in Iowa, or the Club Q shooting in Colorado.
Instead, the Arizona State program, in conjunction with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, has initiated a program to "develop and contribute to the theoretical understanding of Incel ideology" by monitoring online discourse by men and distributing that research to others. They additionally intend to "disrupt Incel radicalization on-ramps withing Twitter" by trying to steer so-called Incels to other content.
"The only reason to associate counter-feminism with terrorism is to make authoritarian measures against the Manosphere more 'palatable' for the public," Zerohedge writes. "To connect philosophical opponents to treason or terrorism is a political attack that government bodies and power hungry zealots have used for all of recorded history, but in this case it feels like the desperate behavior of a cult that is on the verge of fading into obscurity."
The grant proposal addressed the "growing Incel community" saying that they "chose to focus on the Incel community specifically because of the violent misogynistic rhetoric which acts as a foundation for their sexist worldview." They identified 160 Twitter accounts (now X) that they claim are "the most connected key actors and shared content associated with Incel ideology." They also came up with 80 words that are "Incel-specific." This is what American taxpayer funds designated to defend the homeland are being spent on.
Proposed research timeline
The program aimed to target the "'manosphere,'" specifically on Twitter. The grant period was two years, October 1, 2022 through September 30, 2024. In addition to claiming that Incels have murdered 50 people since 2014, they retcon previous mass shooters such as the École Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989, Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, the Columbine school shooters of 1999, Virginia Tech's shooting in 2007, and others.
They thank the pandemic for the decrease in mass shootings, and claim that "the online community plays a crucial role in radicalizing Incels by legitimizing grievances and normalizing vengeance against women." Notably, they do not include the trans community's repeated online calls for violence against women—Punch a TERF—among their investigation.
Instead, they target men aged 18-34 who they claim are anti-feminist, express, loneliness, rage, or suicidal thoughts. They use terms such as "white supremacist" and "male supremacist" to define these, though they do not define those terms. Some concepts that have been considered "white supremacist" in recent years include math, being on time, and using English properly.
In mapping this out, they don't only target men, but the women who "support misogyny," i.e. anyone who rejects the feminist program. In this area, they claim that "anti-woman female influencers are merely opportunistic."
From Diverting Hate, September 2023
Why did they choose to focus on Incels instead of other communities that promulgate hate? Because these views, they say, brings men to the "far-right."
"Radical misogyny can act as a platform for believers to become radical in other spheres, specifically the far right. Incel and far-right belief systems overlap on a variety of issues, however, the attitude towards women is the most significant," they say.
The group proposes that even beyond the two-year, nearly $700,000 funding period, they will "design a more effective policy approach for addressing misogynistic extremism on social media. To do this, we would propose a formal partnership to Twitter as well as expand our methodology to other social platforms such as Meta, YouTube, and TikTok." In other words, they want to censor content on social media. And of course, they have a plan to do this on an international scale.
Diverting Hate has used money from the Department of Homeland Security to "partner" with men who boost mental health initiatives, wellness, and feminist theory.