:reddit-logo: thread for the libs.

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"Andrew Who?" That's most of what the over-30 crowd said in response to the news that Andrew Tate had been banned from TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook after a spate of negative coverage and increasing concerns from parents and teachers about the TikTok star's power over his followers. For adults who don't have teenage sons, the 35-year-old kickboxer-turned-TikTok star was largely unknown, but as anyone in the high school and college age set could tell you, online he was an overnight sensation.

Across the English-speaking world, parents and teachers grew increasingly alarmed, hearing teenage boys and young men parroting Tate's woman-hating rhetoric. One teacher on Reddit last week complained about boys "saying shit like 'women are inferior to men' 'women belong in the kitchen Ms____'.," and refusing "to read an article by a female author because 'women should only be housewives.'" In the thread, multiple teachers chimed in with their own stories about the adolescent fascination with Tate. Beyond arguing that women shouldn't be allowed to drive or work outside of the home, Tate has bragged about beating a woman with a machete and praised Donald Trump for sexually assaulting women.

His popularity is directly attributable to the profit motives of social media companies. As the Guardian demonstrated, if a TikTok user was identified as a teenage male, the service shoveled Tate videos at him at a rapid pace. Until the grown-ups got involved and shut it all down, Tate was a cash cow for TikTok, garnering over 12 billion views for his videos peddling misogyny so vitriolic that one almost has to wonder if he's joking.

Tate is just the latest example of the way that far-right figures lure in young men by preying on their insecurities.

But he is very much not joking.

Police in Romania raided the British-born Tate's Romanian home in April, as part of an investigation into human trafficking. Tate had previously said he likes living in Romania because he believes law enforcement looks the other way on sexual assault allegations.

Parents, teachers, and anyone who cares about the wellbeing of young people should be worried. It's not just that Tate was spreading hateful ideas and encouraging violence against women, though that on its own is terrifying enough. It's that Tate is just the latest example of the way that far-right figures lure in young men by preying on their insecurities. Once the influencers suck in these young men, they start redirecting audience energies towards fascist organizing. Tate is just a piece of a larger puzzle that explains, for instance, how so many otherwise normal young men get wrapped up in groups like the Proud Boys and actions like storming the Capitol on January 6.

The strategy is simple. Far-right online influencers position themselves as "self-help" gurus, ready to offer advice on making money, working out, or, crucially, attracting female attention. But it's a bait-and-switch. Rather than getting good advice on money or health, audiences often are hit with pitches for cryptocurrency scams or useless-but-expensive supplements. And, even worse, rather than being offered genuine guidance on how to be more appealing to women, they're encouraged to blame women — and especially feminism — for their dating woes.

"It's certainly true that male privilege ain't delivering what it used to," Ash Sarkar writes in her piece about Tate for GQ. "Women don't have to sit around waiting to be chosen anymore," but instead are often holding out for male partners who treat them with respect and dignity.

One way for men to respond to this, which many do, is to embrace a more egalitarian worldview and become the partners women desire. But what Tate and other right-wing influencers like him offer male audiences instead is grievance, an opportunity to lash out at feminism. They often even dangle out hope of a return to a system where economic and social dependence on men forced women to settle for unsatisfying or even abusive relationships. Organizing with other anti-feminist men is held out as the answer to their problems.

This bait-and-switch is all over the right-wing influencer world.

What Tate and other right-wing influencers like him offer male audiences instead is grievance, an opportunity to lash out at feminism.

Proud Boys founder Gavin McInness built a young, male audience in large part by suggesting he had the key to landing a "tradwife," which is far-right slang for wives who stay at home and assume a submissive role. (In reality, McInnes's wife is a successful publicist.) Psychology professor-turned-right wing influencer Jordan Peterson first rose to fame as a self-help guru with his book "12 Rules for Life." But his audiences thrill to him not for banal "make your bed" advice, but for proclamations such as recommending "enforced monogamy" on women as a cure for male anxiety. Until his social media ban, Tate was operating something called Hustler University, which promised, for $49 a month, to turn his audience into rich playboys, as he presents himself to be.

But once in the door, the young male audiences aren't just hit with sexist content, but drawn into a larger world of far-right bigotry and, in many cases, anti-democratic sentiment. McInnes's Proud Boys ended up being the vanguard of the Capitol insurrection. Peterson was recently suspended from Twitter and demonetized on YouTube for saying gender transition is "Nazi medical experiment-level wrong."

Most of the coverage of Tate has focused on his misogyny, but as the group Hope Not Hate notes, they've been "monitoring Tate for years, due to his long history of extremism and his close association with major far-right figures." He's been linked with a number of far-right American and British influencers, and not just because he loves Trump. He's been photographed dining with former Infowars anchor Paul Joseph Watson, who was recently recorded ranting about how he wishes "to wipe Jews off the face of the Earth." He's also associated with Jack Posobiec and Mike Cernovich, far-right trolls who pushed Pizzagate and similar hoaxes.

But the 17-year-old kid who starts following Tate because he's titillated by TikTok videos espousing "edgelord" opinions about women doesn't know any of this. All he knows is that this cut guy with a loud mouth is promising that, while "politically incorrect," he's offering advice and opinions that can supposedly give a leg up socially and sexually. It can be intoxicating for young men trying to navigate the confusing and scary world that is often full of rejection. Doubly so when the message they're getting is that the solution isn't to do hard, personal work to make yourself a better catch, but instead to become angry and aggrieved at women for wanting a better deal for themselves.

  • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    What are we doing to get alienated young men to our cause?

    This isn't a hypothetical by the way, I think there's a clear answer.

    • Ideology [she/her]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      The problem is that the right offers easy, immediately digestible, lifehack "solutions" for their grifts. The left, being more honest, tells you that it takes work to succeed, which is a really unattractive proposition by comparison. Putting in the work will make someone more likable in the long term, but without any immediate feedback they seem to give up before then.

      The problem lies in the immediate things men/boys desire being locked up in the consent of others, which is and should remain inviolable, esp given how many orgs have crises due to sex scandals.

      I think, maybe, what the left could do is offer more honest and lasting networks of friendship and trust, which naturally reward efforts toward self-improvement (actual "basic human nature" vs the invisible hand shit libs peddle). But it seems like opsec and safety are pretty big barriers to this. Hard to get to know people if you suspect they're all cops. For example, most people on here yearn for friends, it's talked about near-constantly, and I don't think people here are against the idea of going beyond cat hug emojis and talking to each other for real. But there's a big element of fear there.

      • Ligma_Male [comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        . The left, being more honest, tells you that it takes work to succeed, which is a really unattractive proposition by comparison. Putting in the work will make someone more likable in the long term, but without any immediate feedback they seem to give up before then.

        literally impossible for some of us :sadness-abysmal:

        I think, maybe, what the left could do is offer more honest and lasting networks of friendship and trust, which naturally reward efforts toward self-improvement (actual “basic human nature” vs the invisible hand shit libs peddle). But it seems like opsec and safety are pretty big barriers to this. Hard to get to know people if you suspect they’re all cops. For example, most people on here yearn for friends, it’s talked about near-constantly, and I don’t think people here are against the idea of going beyond cat hug emojis and talking to each other for real. But there’s a big element of fear there.

        also who is going to be friends with these proto chuds? incels getting a relationship can do a lot for them stopping being shitty about women but we can't ask anyone in particular to bite that bullet.

        i don't have a solution, let's just abolish capitalism already

        • Ideology [she/her]
          hexagon
          ·
          2 years ago

          incels getting a relationship can do a lot for them stopping being shitty about women

          It really doesn't, they just treat their partners like crap.

          also who is going to be friends with these proto chuds?

          These two statements are contradictory. The point is not to be friends with them but to create the option and let them know it. Right now, they view leftists as super-libs who wall ourselves off for ideological purity. But rather than make weak aesthetic appeals like Maupin's cult, we need them to know there's a light at the end of the tunnel. The message should be: exchange shit hubris and selfishness for community. Use community to build communism. The fruits of community will include the stuff they want anyway, but will be healthier for everyone involved. However, without community, there is no communism.

              • DialecticalShaman [none/use name]
                ·
                2 years ago

                No! I've had an extremely unfinished take for a while that "having friends is praxis" basically and I think you've done a good job of expanding on that sort of idea.

                • Ideology [she/her]
                  hexagon
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  Sorry, internet. :monke-beepboop:

                  I think my whole ideology is essentially "having friends is praxis". The alienation is real.

          • Ligma_Male [comrade/them]
            ·
            2 years ago

            they don't contradict if you don't clip out the rest of my words

            but we can’t ask anyone in particular to bite that bullet.

            jackass.

            • Ideology [she/her]
              hexagon
              ·
              2 years ago

              You're far too focused on confrontation and not at all on problem solving. If you just throw up your hands and say "whelp, it's unfixable" what purpose does that serve? I don't even know you well enough to dislike you.

              • Ligma_Male [comrade/them]
                ·
                2 years ago

                please stop building straw men.

                i hope your irl stuff you mentioned in another chain gets better for you.

        • Ideology [she/her]
          hexagon
          ·
          2 years ago

          Well most of the people we're talking about kinda violently reject efforts to help them because it's not "the right kind of help" getting them to their immidiate short-term goals. So I think the first step is accepting that they need help. Then others will generally be more amenable to putting in a little more effort to get them off the ground. Or at least we should attempt to cultivate that vibe. I'm still trying to figure it out, I think.

            • Ideology [she/her]
              hexagon
              ·
              2 years ago

              Now this is the kind of stuff I've been looking for.

              there are very, very, very few people who are actually undatable in the eyes of virtually every member of the demographic they’re attracted to. There’s so many women out there, and they’re all individuals and you can’t make sweeping statements about the kind of people they’re drawn towards and what they find attractive.

              Hard agree. So many incels look pretty average...and then they start talking...

              If you’re a moderately physically attractive or physically unattractive straight dude who’s socially awkward or have a hard time successfully performing traditional masculinity and you feel like you’re doing all the right things and you observe that other men being creepy or an asshole tends to get rewarded, while you going out of your way to be polite and honest and kind and trying to create a safe environment for others universally gets you a mixture of rejection and hostility, it’s probably not because you’re crazy or lying about it.

              Some people who think they're going out of their way to be not creepy are actually being more creepy. Though it depends on their goals. You can tell who's being nice to be nice and who sees you as their "current objective" but is putting that on the backburner to get closer to you. They see themselves as honest but aren't really, because they aren't being honest with themselves, either.

              It’s just that it’s not actually the creepiness or the assholery getting rewarded (which is what incels don’t understand), it’s charisma and a successful performance of traditional masculinity.

              Hard agree on this. Which is why I think queering masculinity is a possible (though unpopular) solution. The queer community allows for leeway in masc presentation that straight culture doesn't. It creates the freedom to be your authentic self and be accepted for it. But most dudes don't like that they have to let go of some of their signifiers, even ones they don't like (but project what little status/social power they have left) to trade in for new signifiers they would be more comfortable with, or even open themselves up to accepting signifiers they wouldn't have considered before (like a signifier buffet).

              Rather, they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to court friendships/relationships in straight culture without the requisite charisma (ie. they want us to somehow take on the sisyphesian task of revolutionizing straight culture), and they also don't want to relax into queer-adjacent spheres by rejecting the signifiers of straight culture. We're not trying to turn people gay/trans, to clarify, but I think queering of masculine presentation might help these 'unconventional' men find a place where people don't care about those straight signifiers.

                • Ideology [she/her]
                  hexagon
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  2 years ago

                  Do you mean non-queer men should act more queer?

                  Queer is a very broad heading, including asexual, agender, gender apathetic, demiboy, and much much more! Queer people aren't all genderfuck with simultaneous beards, makeup, and skirts. It's more about cultivating a feminist/anti-patriarchal perspective, allowing yourself the freedom to become your authentic self, and making that underlying structure into a vibe.

                  And before people say "wow, Magical Boy Gender sounds fucking stupid", that's the point. Manhood is stupid and patriarchal norms are just cosplay. Queer people are just playing with it and having fun because it's not that serious. Gender is fake and we all let this silly fake thing control us. But if you play with gender, then other people also playing the game might ask you to join their team. If you take gender super serious like a career, but can't make it to the big leagues due to traits or poverty or lack of practice, then you get stuck as the ball boy (I think this last sentence answers your first couple paragraphs).

                    • Ideology [she/her]
                      hexagon
                      ·
                      2 years ago

                      I'm kinda in a spot where I'm running out of energy for debate due to rl stuff. But I think you might appreciate a few of my influences, even if you decide in the end it's not for you.

                      Masculinity is a Prison with FD Signifier as a guest, during his interview things go from campy to serious. Signifier has great content, and both of these guys are straight/married and trying reach out to people processing masc trauma.

                      Queering Anarchism in which several queer leftist organizers argue that (our culture of) straightness is bad for people and for movements, even harming the cis/straight people who are meant to benefit.

                      The Gender Accelerationist Manifesto is a more marxist version of the above. I think maybe I saw you in my thread for that. But it basically argues that gender is a class structure and that disinvesting from it removes some of its power.

                      I've also read some people influenced by Camatte, but it takes a heavy level of criticality due to modern day material conditions not lining up with his ideas. The one thing I think he does get right in his interpretation of Marx is that to counter capitalism, you need a human community that will keep the flame of communism alive and build toward it. Without building this community, what you end up with instead are a bunch of alienated loners with no potential, not just for revolution but for living their truth (which does line up with material conditions today).

                      It's a bit of a catch-22 because you need to counter capitalist alienation to even build a community. But even Mao has a speech or two stating that you can't just give people guns and expect to win. Your org has to actively put aside time to address the stresses of those peoples' lives in order to give them the space/reason to help, which is a lot of work. But the very existence of the PRC attests to the success of Mao's early focus on community. His strategy outlasted Russian-influenced groups who focused only on hard power and the nationalists who were allowing their communities to decay to the point that Mao's cadres helping out legitimized his leadership style.

                        • SadStruggle92 [none/use name]
                          ·
                          2 years ago

                          I will say that if Ideology is going to be putting this much work into her responses, you should maybe try to earnestly engage with her when she lists off where she gets her ideas from.

                          Granted, I imagine you're mainly just trying to ease the mood. But it can be read as being dismissive as well.

                      • SadStruggle92 [none/use name]
                        ·
                        2 years ago

                        I am sorry that I have made this thread a big mess again.

                        I am not really good at any of these kinds of discussions. For me life has always been a kind of struggle for recognition, and an exercise in having to cajole, or coerce the attentions & concern of people from whom I should never have had to. This is true of my parents & family, who have only ever rarely been able to set aside their own interests, ambitions, or opinions to see to the well-being of me or my sister. It is also true of my "Peers", and "Guardians" who have never hid their repulsion of me.

                        The end result of this is the creature that I now am. And as such a creature, I don't generally feel at ease to set aside my own interests for the sake of working with others, because I don't have cause to believe that anyone else would do the same. It's not really a desireable position to be in, but it is the one that I have.

                        I would prefer if it were possible, to simply hide these threads, so that I don't see them & have the temptation to cause further problems. Going forward I may need to figure out how to disengage. Although admittedly now with my leg healing, I'll probably be at work more often & won't have the time to cause ruckus.

                        • Ideology [she/her]
                          hexagon
                          ·
                          2 years ago

                          Eh, I'm not mad at you or anything. More just disappointed in myself that I can't figure out how to unlock this puzzle (always was bad at puzzles). I think partly I'm running up against a wall because Hex wasn't really designed to be helpful for this sort of thing, but I also can't think of anywhere else where people aren't some subtype of chud.

                          • SadStruggle92 [none/use name]
                            ·
                            2 years ago

                            Ah, IDK. You don't need to be the one to figure this stuff out, tbh and I'm sorry if I'm making you feel like you need to. The big question, and hard problem for popular politics has often been about how to reconcile the needs of particular, marginal, & ill-fitting subjects with the health of society as a whole (and that's before we get to the other hard problem of balancing the needs of those subjects in relation to each other). And you're kinda right that that's not really a question that we can come up with actionable answers to by discussing it abstractly here online.

                            In a lot of ways I do need to be able to find my own place in the world. I just wish that it was easier to translate online community into IRL community.

                            • Ideology [she/her]
                              hexagon
                              ·
                              2 years ago

                              In a lot of ways I do need to be able to find my own place in the world. I just wish that it was easier to translate online community into IRL community.

                              Honestly...same.

                      • SadStruggle92 [none/use name]
                        ·
                        2 years ago

                        Imma be honest; I'm not happy with my involvement in this thread now. 😔

                        I need to stop letting myself get involved in these.

                        Probably gonna get rid of what I wrote.

      • Ideology [she/her]
        hexagon
        ·
        2 years ago

        It really does just feels like laziness, sometimes, doesn't it...

    • Dimmer06 [he/him,comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      We have answers to most of the issues young men face. The problem is that the capitalist media will never give us the traction that a right winger will get, even if we were to make it.

      His popularity is directly attributable to the profit motives of social media companies. As the Guardian demonstrated, if a TikTok user was identified as a teenage male, the service shoveled Tate videos at him at a rapid pace.

      So what has to be done is a mass counter propaganda movement in the schools telling young men that they will find happiness in self-discipline, organization, respect for women, and revolution. Of course it's easier said than done. How do we counter Tik Tok, Youtube, and Instagram? Flyers?