Brianna Wiens is assistant professor of digital media and rhetoric at the University of Waterloo. She teaches graduate students to analyze digital designs, exploring how websites, apps and other media communicate ideas and shape thinking. Her current research looks at images and rhetoric of misogyny, mixed-race representation and misinformation in the context of gender-based violence fuelled by technology. She also runs, with Shana MacDonald, the Feminist Think Tank, “a research-creation collective that advances research on feminist media, art and design.”

She spoke with Christopher White about how the rise in fascist ideology, not just in the United States but across the world, is also causing a spike in misogyny.

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Christopher White: It seems to me that COVID was the launching pad for all sorts of conspiracy theories and these have just been amplified by the extreme-right. How much did the pandemic influence what’s happening right now?

Brianna Wiens: I have a paper in review right now that will be published soon that would say that in many ways, the rise of radicalization of young men was triggered by COVID. I think one of the symptoms of fascism that we’re seeing is the radicalization of young men into kind of manosphere spaces. And I think that COVID did push people down those radicalization pipelines. At the same time, podcasters like Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, Nick Fuentes and Charlie Kirk had more time to create their podcasts and their shows.........

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