Feminist Author Veronika Kracher Faces Backlash After Lecture on Misogyny and Power

In July 2025, Veronika Kracher delivered a lecture on left-wing antisemitism at Hamburg's Rote Flora cultural center. Portions of her remarks were filmed by left-wing activists, then circulated on social media—accompanied by insults, dehumanizing attacks, and defamation targeting the author—or dissected in podcasts. Beyond the direct political assaults or the eager sharing of ridicule directed at Kracher, one notable reaction from the left stood out: She knew her statements would provoke, and now she must endure the backlash.

The idea that women are to blame for the hatred directed at them is an age-old pattern of misogynistic victim-blaming—think of the perverse logic that a miniskirt "provokes" a sexist assault. It is also a textbook example of online shitstorms and mob dynamics, which always operate on the assumption that "the target somehow deserved these attacks," as Kracher explains. And ultimately, following her analysis, it is a defining feature of a societal condition in which misogyny serves as the unifying force behind right-wing agitation, digital culture, and political regression. Against this backdrop, she has now written Bitch Hunt, a book exploring "why we love to hate women."

The "we" in the subtitle is deliberately universal. Women-hating is not confined to the campaigns of scorned ex-partners or the cyberbullying and trolling of so-called lolcows—people mocked online for others' amusement—in niche forums. Nor is the right's obsession with gender and opposition to abortion merely a peripheral phenomenon. According to Kracher, the misogyny on display is an integral "punitive and control mechanism of the patriarchy"—and this patriarchy is itself a core component of society's capitalist whole.

The rise of a figure like Donald Trump, with his punitive promises of redemption, cannot be understood without examining, for instance, the online culture of radicalized gamers who perceive a woman's criticism as "a rerun of strict parents trying to ban their sons from gaming." Similarly, the mass fascination with the humiliating digital spectacle of women—the titular bitch hunt, evoking the witch hunts of old—only makes sense when we consider a society that systematically breeds competition, oppression, and violent self-assertion.

What initially reads in the book's early chapters like a somewhat broad-strokes analysis becomes far sharper as Kracher sifts through her material: the revenge fantasies of incels; the digital mob of Gamergate targeting progressive women daring to challenge the gaming industry; the schadenfreude over the humiliation of Amber Heard or Meghan Markle; the hatred directed at trans people—all these moments are interconnected and part of the global ascendancy of the right.

But the connection runs deeper than men simply exploiting their power and venting their frustrations at women. Public humiliation also serves to enforce conformity on those who defy dominant norms. Patriarchal discipline thus plays a central role in reproducing existing (productive) relations, which men uphold—not necessarily as active woman-haters, but as Kracher makes clear, "all men (...) benefit from misogyny"—whether through their societal privilege or, more concretely, by profiting from the clickbait of hate campaigns.

The societal-theoretical dimension of women-hating becomes especially clear in the rigidity of its system. Despite the breakneck speed of media, the ever-changing memes, and the deluge of algorithmic sludge, Kracher identifies misogyny as a recurring pattern underlying these campaigns. Gamergate, she argues, "essentially provided the playbook for today's far-right culture wars," already showcasing the familiar elements of dehumanization, victim-blaming, and relentless defamation.

That regression, hatred, and the preservation of power operate through women-hating is ultimately proof that we are dealing with a society-wide tendency. Theodor Adorno—and Kracher draws on the Frankfurt School—demonstrated how the "mechanical rigidity of the overall schema" in fascist agitation revealed a "structural unity," rooted in "a conscious or unconscious master conception that determines every word spoken." The same logic applies today.

Critical Theory framed authoritarianism as a means of analyzing society; Kracher compellingly expands this by weaving in patriarchy. Presenting these elements in context does not yet amount to a full critique of society, but it provides an essential "thread in the rope of collective social criticism that we must braid together."