Introduction
This Insight examines responses to the Bondi stabbing attack of 2024 on incel forums, contributing to the current discussion in Australia around misogynistic violence and the official definition of terrorism. Evidence suggests the attacker was motivated by anger and frustration towards women, and women seem to have been targeted during the attack; however, a detailed explanation of the motive remains elusive. Nevertheless, online, incels readily identified the attack as associated with their movement and displayed a range of responses from information-seeking, to sympathetic, to celebratory. The Insight concludes by discussing the implications of an evolving understanding of violent extremism and terrorism for government and tech companies.
Australia Reviews the Definition of Terrorism
In mid-2025, the official definition of terrorism is set to face an independent review in Australia for the first time since the September 11 attacks. Debate continues over whether the current definition is fit to cover new and emerging forms of violent extremist ideology threatening the Australian community. One of the catalytic events driving the review was the Bondi attack, though it is still too early to know if misogynistic beliefs and actions will be covered under any new definition. Currently, the definition of terrorism hinges on public violence intended to advance “a political, religious or ideological cause”, though exactly what constitutes an ideological cause remains unclear.
The Director-General of Australia’s spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), has observed a trend in which motivating ideologies have become more complex and personalised. This includes misogyny connected to a recognised subculture such as incels, though more individual misogynistic attitudes may be more difficult to categorise. Australia is not the only country to be performing such a review, the United Kingdom is also undertaking this task, again driven at least in part by a rise in misogynistic violence.
The Bondi attack
On 13 April 2024, 40-year-old Joel Cauchi started attacking people with a knife at the Westfield Bondi shopping centre in Sydney. In just three minutes, Cauchi killed six people and injured 10 before being fatally shot by police. It was later revealed that Cauchi was obsessed with knives, homeless, and had stopped taking medication for schizophrenia.
Of the 16 people stabbed that day, 14 were female. It was the opinion of the New South Wales Police Commissioner that Cauchi had obviously targeted women. A statement by Cauchi’s father indicated that, among his various problems at the time, Cauchi was “desperate for a girlfriend” and frustrated at his inability to get one. These facts, compelling but not definitive, are all there is to colour public understanding of what happened that day and why.
Misogyny, Incels, and Terrorism
According to a scoping review by O’Hanlon et al, misogynistic extremism is most frequently conceptualised as related to inceldom and associated ideologies within the far right, including the black pill. Researchers within the review advocated for violence stemming from misogynistic communities to be treated as terrorism. However, debate continues around the degree to which misogyny can be treated as an ideology. More structured and articulated cases, such as incels, are potentially much easier to understand as ideological than vague, poorly understood cases such as Cauchi.
Even if understood as a terrorist threat, misogynistic violence presents challenges to traditional counter-terrorism strategies. These challenges are likely familiar to anyone studying new and emerging extremist ideologies generally. Misogynist violence is typically individualised and, to the degree that it can be related to any wider phenomenon, characterised more by affiliation to a broad milieu rather than a defined group or movement. Arguably, the closest a researcher can get to a discrete, defined misogynist ideology is the incel community.
The incel community is “characterized by misogynistic beliefs surrounding women and a fatalistic outlook on society”. Within this basic definition, myriad variations exist, some of which approve of or carry out acts of violence. One of the most infamous incel murderers, Elliot Rodger, drafted a manifesto that, while bleak and disturbing, is instructive in understanding the personal and political dimensions of violent inceldom. Within the document, Rodger floats ideas for an alternative society, including the subjugation and enslavement of women, a dictatorial system of government, and an army of fanatics. While such ideas are not shared by all incels, they demonstrate the community’s preoccupation with not only personal grievance, but how it relates to politics and ideology.
Incel Commentary on the Bondi Attack
Immediately upon learning of Cauchi’s likely motivations, the incel community was rife with reactions and speculation. Hundreds of relevant posts were collected on a popular incel discussion forum, and 70 have been thematically coded (this is the point at which data saturation became apparent). These themes are explored below. In all cases, illustrative examples but not the entire corpus are presented.
Figures 1 & 2: Incel commentary on online forums about the Bondi attack
Information Seeking, Media Comments, and the Terror Label
19 posts illustrated discussion and commentary about the media coverage of the event, including the desire for more information and opinions about the potential for the event to be labelled as a terrorist attack. Generally speaking, posters were critical of the position that the attack constituted terrorism:
Ah yes, the commie antifa nazi ISIS redpill incel terrorist
Ladies and gentlemen, we’re all domestic terrorists
I don’t mind calling it a hate crime, but calling it a terror attack is just stupid.
In some of these posts, the authors pose arguments similar to those being debated within the academic and security communities around the appropriateness of the terrorism definition:
There is no “incel revolution” in the sense of a unified political movement. In every case it is a personal vendetta. Women will support actual terrorists [sic] groups like Hamas but not the men they have driven to insanity through years of bullying and isolation.
Another sub-theme that emerged in the posts is contempt towards the media and a desire for more information. In particular, some users mocked media reports that cited comments made in the incel forum:
Why they think that visiting an open forum is a [sic] some sort of achievement?
“Undercover” in a forum that literally anyone can view publicly. Guess they gotta make it sound like they’re doing something so they can get paid.
At this point, I just want the facts truthfully. I’ll make my own judgement about an incident.
Speculation Around Motive
14 posts related to whether the incident could reliably be classed as incel violence, and what the consequences of such a designation might be:
Confirmed. “He wanted a girlfriend and he’s got no social skills and he was frustrated out of his brain,” his father said.
White nationalists on Twitter were using this as a rallying cry of the barbarism of Arabs, and why they should all be deported. Now that they found out it was a white dude, it’s been dead silence.
Although there are whispers calling this guy a Jew jfl.
It’s a scary thought that I could be lynched by these ‘people.’ Then again, if that happened, I would hopefully be killed and escape this insane and unfair planet.
They give awareness to the incele, [sic] it doesn’t matter how they twist the facts. The message is clear – “there exists a group of bitter sexless men”. For those who are dedicated enough, they will seek us out.
Celebrations of Violence
13 instances in the sample showed an unabashed celebration of the violence committed by Cauchi. Whether intended as serious or ironic, these illustrate the extreme misogynistic views associated with the community:
Beating women is based
men who kill women are heroes
INSANE LIFEFUEL. IM COOMING IN MY PANTS
It’s a shame that the police stopped him
my man went to town. lmao!
Saint Cauchi
11 posts go further than simple celebration of the act to venerate Cauchi as a hero and a “saint”. Designation of perpetrators as saints is a common online extremist discourse most associated with far-right accelerationism but also practiced by incels subscribing to violent extremist ideas. As such, these posts most closely align incel understandings of the attack with popular understandings of terrorism:
New Saint – Joel Cauchi (The surfing kangaroo)
Here I bring you a new Saint!!
based manlet Saint I pay respect to this fallen soldier may Incelhalla open the gates for this soldier of justice.
Australian sluts deserved this. Joel Cauchi is a hERo
he is the true victim. justice for saint coohie [sic].
Sympathy
Six posts in the sample exhibited sympathy for Cauchi and his father, relating to his struggles:
Also that poor father, he seems to really care about his son
No doubt had nothing left to give and was discriminated by society
Any incels who have been “trycels” know exactly this feeling, the helpless feeling of trying to hook people in, yet, it is as futile as an astronaut falling into a black hole.
Within these, along with general sympathetic notions, are arguments that society is to blame for not addressing the issues faced by incels:
I don’t blame him, I blame society for not caring about our problems, they have ignored us.
…They ask how could this man do such a thing but never question the fact that they were part of the problem. Did they help that mentally ill guy? Did they respond to his requests to get involved in language learning, surfing etc on facebook groups? Nooo they laughed at him and ignored his pleas for help.
Escort/Gay Discussion
Five posts speculate and discuss reports that Cauchi had advertised on male escort sites in the days before the attack. These discussions can be understood in terms of the centrality of sex to incel discourse but also the antipathy towards LGBTQ+ people common within the community:
He was a male escort, well he at least advertised to be one
Actually, he may not be. There’s no former customers coming up to talk about him or something.
Wasn’t mofo like an escort or something? So probably a sex-haver. So much for sex solves any violence problem. This forum is the only solution we have, literally a life-saver.
Disparagement of Cauchi
Five posts in the sample were disparaging of Cauchi. These were typically centred around the escort ads and Cauchi’s sexuality, but some also were critical of his fate at the hands of a female police officer:
He was so beta a foid [dehumanising term for a woman] killed him
bisexual male escort is saint now? wtf
Would be a lot cooler if he wasn’t a faggot
Anti-violence
Finally, within the sample, only two posts pushed back about celebratory discourse around the killing. It is unclear if this is truly representative of how few incels felt that the killing was unjustified, or whether others were unwilling to voice such opinions in the forum:
This stuff shouldnt [sic] be glorified
also this saint stuff is just cringe and ridiculous
Policy Implications
The implications of including misogynistic violence in official understandings of terrorism are still being explored. One argument posed is that doing so empowers governments to approach it with a level of seriousness that is warranted (in Australia, the Prime Minister has called violence against women a “national crisis”, with one woman being killed every four days). Failing to class misogynistic violence as extremist or terrorist may also skew the picture of how common violent extremism is – on the other hand, creating a dichotomy of “extreme” and “non-extreme” misogyny may also be problematic.
A recent report by the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) explores these kinds of developments in the field and how they may (or should) affect tech companies and social media. Strategies such as hash-sharing, currently used on jihadist-related content, could be expanded to include violent misogynistic content. As one of the most culturally developed misogynist communities, understanding of incel discourse and language could be instructive to such an endeavour, though it is unknown if this would have been effective in highly individual and unclear cases such as Cauchi’s. To do this would likely necessitate a better understanding of the structures underpinning online and offline misogyny more generally. The current state of misogynist violence in Australia and beyond illustrates that this is a task that is well overdue.