EXTREME violence linked to so-called “Incel communities” is accelerating and can now linked to 59 murders, a leading expert has claimed.

Incel refers to people who describe themselves as “involuntarily celibate” and online communities have been linked to the promotion of violence against women and other groups.

Callum Hood, from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, said: “This is an emerging problem and what we’ve seen, particularly in the US, but also around the world, is that there’s been 59 killings attributed to members of Incel communities in recent years.

“Just over a year ago, in Plymouth, there was a young man who perpetrated a mass shooting and our own research showed that he was a member of Intel communities.

“And he said himself that this caused damage to his mental health and it caused him to be more full of rage and more hostile.

“What our researchers are showing is that while these people are often represented as sort of lone wolves, as loners – they’re actually members of thriving online communities that are promoting extreme violence against women and mass shootings.”

Mr Hood, speaking in an interview with GB News, said: “We should be taking them more seriously. The harms are not just limited to violence and mass shootings. What our research shows is that there is an increasing tolerance of paedophilia, for example.

“We looked at conversations about paedophilia on this leading Incel forum and 53% of users thought child abuse was legitimate.

“And that was supported by the leadership of the forum, which had actually shockingly changed the rules of the forum in March 2022 from do not sexualise minors to do not sexualise pubescent minors, therefore carving a space in which they could sexualise underage girls.”

He said: “There’s a wider range of harms here, both to the younger men who get involved in these communities, it’s harmful to them and to their mental health.

“Many of them come into these communities because they’re concerned about their body image or because they’re unemployed and depressed. So it’s a harmful place for them to be and then it’s causing harm to those around them.

“We found users as young as 15. And we found users who said they’ve been even referred to the UK prevent programme because of their involvement in extremism.

‘They come to this forum for help from other users so there’s a really concerning community here.

“We know it’s already resulted in killings. And there’s the question of whether it’s causing wider harm as well.”

Mr Hood said: “It’s important to say that we’re talking about the leading Incel communities and those are very extreme, are misogynist, promote all the things that I’ve just described, rape, violence, even paedophilia.

“We think there’s some really simple practical steps social media companies and big tech can take to try and close down some of the pathways that young men take into these communities, and are then subjected to greater extremism.

“Many of these communities rank very high on Google search for some of the concerns that I’ve talked about, so search terms to do with body image or to do with suicide and depression.

“We’re saying that’s not a healthy place for these young users to go who are concerned about those issues and be exposed to greater extremism.”

He added: “Similarly on YouTube, we found as a result of our report…an Incel YouTube channel with 136,000 subscribers and 24 million views on their videos.

“So we’re saying to YouTube, look, this is a really dangerous form of extremism actually and you probably don’t want to be hosting it on your platform.”