From Incels to Mercenaries: When Online Hate Becomes Real-World Violence

Ceren Fitoz is a digital investigator with the Technology, Law & Policy program at the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law.

On October 4, 2024, a young man in Istanbul named Semih Çelik killed two young women on the same day. Both women had previously rejected his romantic advances.

Çelik was apparently motivated by his incel group on Discord to first slit the throat of Ayşenur Halil in her home. He then killed İkbal Uzuner and called her mother, instructing her to meet him at Istanbul’s city hall, where he dropped İkbal’s decapitated head from the top of the building before killing himself.

Çelik’s extreme public display of cruelty galvanized protests across Turkey, with feminist groups citing these femicides as two on the tail end of 34 recorded murders of women that took place in September 2024 alone. At the same time, Çelik’s actions were celebrated by his incel group on Discord. The image of Çelik holding Ikbal’s decapitated head circulated among online incel groups before the Turkish government responded by banning Discord a few days later.

Gendered violence predates the internet. There is a long history of men taking the lives of women who reject them. But the ways these kinds of retributive acts are encouraged online both celebrate and proliferate real-life violence. Celik’s story is considered a success among Turkish incel groups, but it also sits within a global phenomenon of gendered violence exacerbated by information and communications technologies. Modern online extremist groups are defined by their use of violence as a form of currency within their communication spaces.

This past November, after the US presidential election, a tweet posted by 26-year old self-described incel Nick Fuentes reading “your body, my choice” became a new rallying cry for this online community. Men copy-pasted the threat in the comments sections of women’s Instagram posts; young boys began chanting the slogan in schools. When women posted videos of themselves crying in fear of this rally, Fuentes responded that it was only further proof that they enjoyed the attention.

In the New Yorker, staff writer Jia Tolentino exposed the violent subtext to the “your body, my choice” trolling: if women are crying at the mere mention of sexual violence, “why not go ahead and give them something to cry about for real?”

Fuentes and Çelik are part of a long lineage of men who are radicalized online and, in the case of Çelik, inspired to commit physical violence against women. Banning the apps where radicalization occurs does little to stop the congregation of like-minded people on whatever other platform will allow it. Even if one platform, such as Discord, is banned, there are numerous alternatives available for internet users.

One of these alternatives is Telegram, which has become a preferred platform for bad actors. A recent New York Times investigation identified it as a tool used by traffickers and violent hate groups to communicate, coordinate, and recruit.

Çelik’s Discord group celebrated his beheading of a woman. On Telegram, there are channels where beheadings are not just commended, but commonplace, incorporating misogynistic violence and extending to general egregious violence. Such posts keep company with a constant influx of dead and mutilated bodies, sexist threats, and even cannibalism. Several of these channels are affiliated with the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company (PMC) that has operated since 2014 in countries such as Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Central African Republic, and the Central Sahel region.

PMC Wagner uses Telegram frequently, with different channels created for a range of activities — official announcements, recruitment material, fan pages posting pictures of Wagner emblems and badges, and updates of Wagner fighters on active missions. These channels go beyond simple communication, functioning as a digital community that promotes aggression, encourages violence, and shares conquest trophies.

Members of these channels share a common language forged by the self-contained nature of these forums and the extreme violence celebrated there, fostering a strong sense of camaraderie among members who have opted in to this content. These are online spaces by Wagner fighters, for Wagner fighters, where they proudly disseminate evidence of their own violent acts.

When PMC Wagner deployed to Syria in 2017, they filmed themselves decapitating the head of a Syrian man with a sledgehammer. The men in the video egg each other on, with one instructing the other to “cut harder.” The video, as well as pictures of the fighters posing with the man’s body parts, have circulated for years among Wagner-affiliated Telegram channels and the Russian social media platform VKontakte (VK).

In April 2023, a video was published on Telegram of Russian fighters, alleged by some to be members of Wagner, filming themselves decapitating a Ukrainian soldier who was still alive in Bakhmut. Using the victim’s phone, they sent pictures of his severed head to numbers on his contact list.

One channel with an exceptional appetite for violence focuses on Wagner’s activities in the Central Sahel, in countries like Burkina Faso and Mali. Its name in Russian translates roughly to “White Uncles in Africa,” aptly-named for its adventure log of thrill-seeking, armed Russians.

The channel functions both as a status update for Wagner fighters and a space where Wagner affiliates and fans can submit gratuitous images of disfigured bodies, videos of cannibalism, racist jokes, and sexually explicit images of African women to the channel’s administrator. For example, images of dismembered bodies are regularly paired with captions about “making minced meat” or “black jelly meat.” It is a gallery of normalized horror where foreign men regularly enact violence on local communities with total impunity, under the patronizing guise of “saving” them from those the government has deemed terrorists.

In late 2021, Wagner made an agreement with the junta in Mali to lead joint counterinsurgency operations with the Malian Armed Forces. These military operations have resulted in grave human rights violations and mass civilian casualties. While the Malian government has denied both the existence of Wagner fighters in its country and the allegations of abuses attributed to them and their own forces, Wagner-affiliated Telegram channels have been posting images and videos of gross violations of international humanitarian law in Mali.

In 2024, after Tuareg rebels in Mali ambushed and killed a large contingent of Wagner fighters, video footage allegedly taken from the body cameras of dead Wagner fighters appeared online. One video shows Russian and Malian soldiers flanking the entrance of a hut as they interrogate a woman inside. Utilizing every language at their disposal alongside multiple live translations, the Russian men ask her for information regarding rebels in the area. Unwilling to accept her answer, the Wagner fighters demand that she remove her clothes, and, without waiting for a reply, “Do it yourself or we’ll force you.” Even as the woman says she has no information to give, they threaten to parade her around naked in front of the other villagers. This video provides a rare and vivid record of gendered violence, illustrating how Wagner’s online presence translates into physical aggression offline.

Violence is currency for these groups. The more gratuitous and horrific it is, the more attention and engagement it gets, the higher its value. Violence is the medium by which Wagner promotes itself to potential recruits and maintains its legacy among existing members. Telegram channels form the marketplace for this violence. Potential recruits to the Wagner group know that violence is what it takes to get hired and paid. These incentives are the driving force of a perpetual feedback loop: real-world violence is posted online, and violent online content produces more physical violence.

Marc-André Argentino, a researcher of nihilistic accelerationist online communities, writes that contemporary extremist groups are “not only increasingly violent, but also audacious enough to document and disseminate all their activities.” Wagner’s online presence can be understood as one manifestation of a larger constellation of online networks that promote violence.

For the men who are part of these online communities, acts of violence are both celebrated individually and used to solidify their membership in this death cult.

Understanding a group like PMC Wagner within the context of the culture that binds online extremist groups, rather than simply viewing them as a security concern, helps understand how these cycles of violence continue.

Violence against women continues to be a beloved content genre for these online extremist groups. It is arguably the most accessible entry point for men celebrating violence — enter a few keywords online, and you will find an endless supply of women being beaten, held captive, raped, even murdered and mutilated post-mortem. It is so normalized, so acceptable, so mundane that the bar of shock-factor violence has skyrocketed to dismemberment and cannibalism.

The internet functions as a nauseating funhouse mirror to hate, ballooning and normalizing violence towards women and vulnerable populations. Thus, it will require both online and offline interventions to end violence in these online communities, stop the celebration and acceleration of abuses, and hold perpetrators accountable.