Women and the Far Right w/ Lizzie Dearden

We are in a new age of terror, with self-radicalising, hard-to-categorise individuals planning violence. Each one caught by the British state tells us something about British society. Security services are striving to contain a staggering 3,000 far-right extremists, Islamist and other potential threats. As the far right has gained popularity and acceptance around the world, its ranks have swelled with an unlikely category of members: women. Understanding how and why women join movements that explicitly aim to restrict their autonomy is essential if we want to fight back.

In their book Pink-pilled, journalist Lois Shearing interviews leading experts and infiltrates communities of tradwives and femtrolls to provide a cutting-edge account of how the far right uses the internet to recruit women. Shining a light on women’s experiences within these movements, Shearing offers key insights for countering women’s radicalisation and building communities resistant to far-right thought.

Lizzie Dearden is a journalist, a guest lecturer in security reporting at City, University of London, and former home affairs editor of The Independent. She has covered UK terrorism and extremism in depth since 2017, as well as global terrorism trends. She previously reported on Isis-inspired attacks around the world.

About Plotters

Since 2017, the UK has seen eighteen terrible terrorist attacks. But the atrocities on our evening news are the tip of a vast iceberg. Security services are striving to contain a staggering 3,000 jihadists, far-right extremists and other potential threats. We are in a new age of terror, with self-radicalising, hard-to-categorise individuals planning violence—but each one caught by the British state tells us something about British society.

Since the Westminster Bridge attack that changed everything, more than 40 terror plots have been foiled. Some were thwarted by nerve-wracking undercover operations; others were narrowly averted by heroic citizens, or ruined by the absurd mistakes of would-be attackers. Invariably, the all-too-human stories of these failed terrorists reveal the true picture of UK extremism.

Through interviews with senior counter-terror figures and astonishing court testimony, Plotters unpacks how and why British terror attacks happen—and don’t. From dating websites and prison cells to Telegram networks and Tesco knives, Lizzie Dearden’s deep dive offers one disturbing certainty: the plotters will keep coming. To confront them, we need to understand them.