SAN DIEGO — A livestreamed attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego was uploaded to an online forum known for hosting graphic content depicting murder, suicide, rape, and torture. Authorities attributed a 75-page typewritten document to the teenage suspects that reveals deep immersion in far-right and neo-Nazi ideology.

The document identifies Jewish people as the number one enemy and immediately follows by naming women as the number one enemy as well. It employs dehumanizing language common in the misogynist incel community, using a term intended to shorthand “female humanoid organism” to deny women’s humanity.

“He just flat out says he hates women and that they're the devil and they're destroying everything. And this is an important thing, because that kind of misogyny did not exist in white supremacist circles, say, 10, 15 years ago,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. She added, “It has completely infected the white supremacist realm. Misogyny is as important, I would argue, as racism or neo-Nazi-ism now to people that traffic in these kinds of ideas and live in these cultures.”

Alex DiBranco, executive director and co-founder of the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism, noted the interconnection of hatreds in the suspects’ ideology. “We've seen similar kinds of conspiratorial thinking about women 'pulling the strings behind the scenes' as well. And so the targeting of a mosque in San Diego is something that is interrelated not only with Islamophobia, but also with antisemitism and deep misogyny.” DiBranco also said, “That section on women uses dehumanizing language that's really popular in the misogynist incel community. [It's] a term that is intended to indicate that women are actually not human, that they are 'humanoid,' and this has been popular for a number of years.”

Matthew Kriner, executive director of the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism, said the suspects “filmed their activities in the same script that we've seen previous accelerationist attackers do.” He stated that the production of both the video and the manifesto for public consumption places the San Diego attack firmly within a distinct subculture of far-right extremism. The materials linked to the suspects contain markers echoing the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks by Brenton Tarrant.