I have been thinking more about the documentary Inside the Manosphere that I reviewed recently and it struck me how the so-called influencers of the movement that were featured in the film have taken a kernel of truth and distorted it in order to give the young men who they have lured into their sphere a false idea of how power is wielded in society. It shows how successful a sleight-of-hand argument can be when wielded skillfully against their targets, in this case young, poor men who are frustrated at their lack of success in life, be it in the area of money or with women.

The influencers first assert that it is ‘the system’ that is keeping young men down and preventing them from becoming successful. There is a kernel of truth in that (that most conspiratorial theories must have in order to gain acceptance) but the influencers then divert attention away from the capitalist system that is exploiting most people and say that a shadowy cabal is doing it. Who exactly makes up this shadowy cabal is left largely unspecified but Jews are frequently mentioned.

The ruling class has always tried to pit ordinary people against each other by dividing them based on their ethnicity, nationality, religion, and other demographic characteristics. This has been a long-standing ruling class tactic because they recognize that a divided opposition is the only way they can retain power. Rather that seeing efforts to lift up marginalized groups as a way of correcting historical wrongs and creating a more equitable society, the message being promoted by Trump and his followers is that special privileges are being given to those groups at the expense of white heterosexual men.

The new wrinkle introduced by the manosphere is to add women to the mix, and say that they have been given special privileges at the expense of men and that it is now women who have all the power and dominate society. They say that we live in a ‘feminized’ world in which men are emasculated. The only way that men can regain what they think they rightfully deserve is to seize back power by becoming ‘real’ men by developing their physiques, becoming rich, and demanding that women be submissive to their wills. For a price, these influencers will show their acolytes how to do this by taking their courses, buying their books, and investing in their companies. The influencers effectively fleece the young, largely poor, and marginalized young men who fall for this line and tell them that they too can become rich and drive fancy cars and live in big homes and get attractive young women to flock to them if only the subscribe to what the influencers are selling.

What is the basis for the argument that women have all the power? The film lays it out and it is extraordinarily crass, not to say flimsy. At the 24:00 mark, one of the influencers named Justin Waller tells two of his acolytes that men are born without value and have to work hard for everything but women have ‘intrinsic value’ because of their looks, If they are beautiful, they will be invited to ride in fancy cars and go on trips but no one is going to give these young men anything. They have to make themselves valuable by becoming rich. At the 25:00 mark, another influencer named Myron Gaines preaches a similar message in even more crass terms, saying that women are born with their value but men have to create their value. When a young woman challenges him, asking him how he can say that women have the power, his answer is quite astonishing. He has that women have “vaginas and titties” and that this makes them powerful because they posses the very things that men want.

Coarse as this argument is, it actually proves the reverse of what Gaines intended. What it shows is that women are being reduced to being mere bodies and that heterosexual men are the ones with power because they are the ones who have the ability to purchase what they want, even if it includes the bodies of women. If it was indeed the case that heterosexual women had all the power, then what we should see is the reverse, women showering attractive young men with gifts to purchase their bodies. But this glaring flaw in their logic is elided over. The young men who are attracted to the message of these influencers seem to be wallowing in self-pity and eager to accept any explanation for their situation that puts the blame on others.

There are of course plenty of attempts to try and understand this weird mentality, as in this review of the documentary by Kathy Sheridan.

Watch again and the soulless, ignorant young men become savagely wounded children with podcasts, millions of social media followers and a guru in the shape of the alleged rapist and sex trafficker, Andrew Tate.

Watch the relentless scratching for the content to get clicks to lure more lonely, insecure boys into the squalid porn/crypto/investment/Ponzi schemes with the “cheat codes” which fund the toys that “prove” the success of the brand, luring in even more of the lonely boys. And so on. A perfect circle of exploitation.
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We can argue about the original sin that turned little boys into a version of Donald Trump – the world’s most obviously wounded child – but it’s the Matties who should concern us now. He represents all the boys on the cusp, who have been sold the idea of a matrix – a secret world government run by Satanists, feminists and Jews, which is purposely designed to make men fail. Mattie will crumble under his guru’s pressure to man up or he will morph into the worst, emotionally-disconnected version of himself, like his gurus.

The problem for all women and men is that none can deny that the manosphere exists or that it is founded on a Darwinian view of alpha male supremacy.

Women are entitled to be concerned for their sons, for the men they will become and they are also entitled to fear for their daughters who must live with it.

These manosphere influencers are making a lot of money from the clicks they generate with their videos and it is clear that antisemitic, racist, misogynistic, and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric draws in a lot of views from disaffected young men, the more extreme and controversial the better. So we end up in a spiral where these influencers becoming richer with the money that these poor men give them. When they end up being even poorer and feeling even more disenfranchised, is it any surprise that they become even angrier at the world?