Misogyny, Antisemitism, and Islamophobia in the San Diego Mosque Shooting, by Alex DiBranco – 19 May 2026

From the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism

Despite extensive misogynist content in the two shooters’ manifestos, discussion of the intersection of male supremacism with xenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, and white supremacism is hard to find in the reporting on yesterday’s tragic shooting at a San Diego mosque.

Both manifestos identify among their inspirations the perpetrator of the 2014 Santa Barbara mass killing targeting a sorority; the 1989 Montreal attack targeting women in engineering school; and the 2011 Norway Social Democrats’ youth camp attack that killed 77 people, mostly children and young adults. The first manifesto, “MisanthropistCEL,” refers to perpetrators as “incel saints,” a popular trend of claiming and glorifying violent perpetrators in misogynist incel communities. The title of the manifesto itself follows the community’s use of the suffix “-cel” to create their own self-identifications.

As discussed in our white paper released last month, male supremacism, with its foundation in dehumanization and entitlement, provides justification of violence, “whether explicitly motivated by misogyny or associated with another ideology. A vital element of the study of violence is the basic fact that cisgender men are the primary perpetrators of all types of violence, including the vast majority of acts of mass violence.” The May 18th perpetrators glorify violence and also identify as accelerationists, a “term used by white supremacists and other extremist groups to refer to ‘their desire to hasten the collapse of society as we know it’” through violence.

Yesterday’s attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego–which resulted in the deaths of three victims, Amin Abdullah, Mansour Kaziha and Nader Awad–and the limitations of the early media coverage are reminiscent of the 2011 Norway Social Democrats’ youth camp massacre. (Abdullah, a security guard, is credited as preventing yesterday’s perpetrators from accessing areas of the mosque where there were more than 100 kids.) Most of the coverage of the Norway attack focused on the perpetrator’s Islamophobia and xenophobia, neglecting the role of antifeminist conspiracism; his manifesto blames “radical feminism” for Muslim immigration through the destruction and feminization of Western culture, viewing feminists as controlling the media, education, and government.

The manifesto starts with deep antisemitism, then moves on to misogyny in the next section, writing, “After the Jew the most evil creature in this world is the woman.”

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Alex DiBranco (she/her) is the executive director and co-founder of the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism. Her work furthers understanding of male supremacist ideology and methods for gender justice change, with a research emphasis on male supremacist violence, anti-feminist conspiracism, misogynist incel and men’s rights ideologies, and anti-abortion movements and the Christian Right. Her writing has appeared in outlets including the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism Journal, The Nation Magazine, and The Public Eye quarterly, a publication of the think tank Political Research Associates. She has provided trainings and advice on male supremacist ideology for journalists and for social justice organizations such as Western States Center, National Domestic Workers Alliance, and SURJ.

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