Understanding ideologically motivated violence against women using the AnCoDi Method

In 1997, a Canadian student named “Alana” launched a website for people who struggled to find romantic or sexual partners. The group, which felt that their celibate state was involuntary, called themselves incels for short and aimed to create a support network to alleviate members’ loneliness. Nearly twenty years later, Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old self-identified incel living in California, went on a day-long shooting spree. Rodger left behind a 137-page manifesto that went viral on 4chan and inspired others in his community. By 2020, Canadian authorities laid terrorism charges in connection with incel-motivated violence, making it the first time incel ideology was formally treated as terrorism under Canadian law. How did a support group for lonely young people, described by early researchers as suffering in silence, come to be associated with terrorism? The AnCoDi hypothesis provides a useful methodological framework for understanding this shift, suggesting that the combination of an ger, co ntempt, and di sgust (AnCoDi) has a synergistic effect, creating volatile emotional responses that contribute to intergroup violence. When invoked by group leaders, each emotion plays a role in mobilizing violence: anger motivates, contempt devalues outgroups, and disgust justifies eliminating them. As many consider Rodger to be a powerful leader among Incels and to also mark a turning point within the community, the current study uses the AnCoDi method to analyze Rodger’s manifesto to better understand the shift toward violent extremism. We identified anger, contempt, and disgust throughout the manifesto in a cumulative pattern consistent with the mobilization toward violent extremism.