Keen On

In a week dominated by the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk, Cynthia Miller-Idriss’ insights as the founding director of American University’s Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) are particularly valuable. Her new book about what she identifies as “the new misogyny and the rise of violent extremism” is entitled Man Up. But its message might be summarized as Man Down in its attempt to temper the violent fringes of what she calls the manosphere. Miller-Idriss, one of America’s leading researchers on violent extremism, argues that misogyny is the cause of today’s troubling rise of political assassinations and mass shootings. Her research across seven countries reveals that hostile sexism ranks among the top three predictors of support for political violence. She traces a disturbing pipeline from seemingly innocuous self-help searches by lonely young men to radicalization by influencers who blend fitness advice with violent scapegoating of women and minorities. Miller-Idriss docume