In choosing to sacrifice young men at the altar of identity politics, Progressives took cheap shots to greedily shore up their expanding minority base. They assumed that men's response would be to skulk in the corner and bow their heads in mortification. Instead, opportunists like Fuentes created an army of testosterone-fueled rebellion. And the boxing ring of social media gets a new round of bludgeoning.
Exactly. The young, always and everywhere, will say things to outrage the olds. The screams about it are just as predictable. I was prepared to dislike Fuentes but instead was struck by how normal it seemed to be a pissed off young man in a time of scolds, porn and isolation. We dismiss these young men at our peril.
Fascinating insight that they’re dirtying the pen to keep others out.
What you say about shrinking of the private sphere reminds me of the retired British police officers convicted of sharing off-colour jokes in a private Whatsapp group. Their offence was to send ‘by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive…’ The act is from 2003 and could not have had in mind the exchanging of jokes in a Whatsapp group. Dare I say it’s Orw…
You’ll be aware, I’m sure, of the Men’s Sheds controversy: the demand to allow women into a space that was once reserved for vulnerable men. The recently appointed CEO in the UK is a woman who used to be at Stonewall. Last week I saw a segment on Newstalk radio titled, ‘The growing trend for women’s sheds’. You couldn’t make it up.
Have you seen ‘Dining with the Enemy’ on TV3? A mixture of right wing and woke participants shouting over each other at a dinner table. It’s mostly rubbish, but the different approaches to debate are revealing. The women are inclined to wave their arms in front of them, laugh derisively, say things like ‘woah, woah, woah’, and, of course, cry. It all feels distinctly American. (I will say one thing for the programme: it’s pretty radical in Ireland to encourage people to have controversial debates about immigration, gender, and others, and it may well help normalise it.)
I did see the TV3 I don’t like the sound of people arguing so I couldn’t bear it. That thing about the men’s sheds is hilarious, I wasn’t aware of that
Without disagreeing I do think there’s more to it than that, I was trying to highlight a specific appeal that hadn’t been highlighted elsewhere. But yeah
> the fact that men get more pure pleasure from being mean than women do
I don’t think that’s true at all. Female cruelty is different though, and “woke” norms are an ideal weapon for it!
This may also explain part of your overall solid thesis – men, especially young and low-status men, are often downrange of feminine coded cruelty and groyperism is a loud, crude (male-coded!) way of returning fire.
There may of course be other elements to why Fuentes’ inner circle seems to be completely devoid of women!
And the outrage cycle will feed the outrage cycle. Everytime I open X it feels like digital 1914. It’s hard to see a way out for the culture. Maybe Mamdani will help 🥺? Anyone??
What's sad to me, and what I wish young Gen Z guys had any concept of, is that Fuentes's entire schtick is what Rieff called a death-work. There's a gaping emptiness at the heart of the whole thing. Every bit he does is a meme overstaying its welcome. At the end of the day, it signifies nothing. But a generation of men without chests, in Lewis's words, won't be able to tell or care.
The trouble with setting up your own clubs is that the existing ones tend to be where the influence is. If men continue to vacate, say, the cultural sphere, won't this problem continue to worsen? And is it simply implausible that institutions will reverse their feminine slide (even with Trump in office)?
I think the problem will continue to worsen yes, personally I do think it’s implausible that there’ll be a reversal because of educational factors (women will have increasing power in legitimate institutions because they will be more highly educated). But who knows
Put another way, our common use of “meritocracy” conflates #yrs of gleichschaltung + a clown school exit cert with “merit”, but there are no ready proxies for substantial merit. That’s also why actual hiring work as opposed to paint-the-numbers HR is both an art and a science with which serious organizations struggle mightily.
The counter culture became the culture. This of course created a new counter culture, and counter culture has a built-in status, this shift makes guys like Fuentes seem “cool” to younger guys. Also worth noting, I am 37 and have zero interest in Fuentes or that side of the new right, but even someone like me- pretty normal Christian guy- saying normal things is verboten to the mainstream culture today.
> there has been an incredible outpouring of interpretation of his popularity from respectable outlets, including prominent pieces in the New York Times, The Atlantic and the Washington Post
Is it genuine analysis or are they building up Fuentes to make him appear a bigger part of MAGA than he actually is?
I saw a bit of it, I must read it fully, thanks for reminding me. I’m not a huge fan- I would guess his take revolved around the awfulness of MAGA and stupidity of the modern right generally, which is somewhat in conflict with mine.
Yeah. He thinks the entire Republican Party is slipping into a racist world view that is the mirror image of wokism. It differs from your take, but maybe you are describing a deeper psychological cause (he suggests it's just stupidity) behind the shifting values he sees.
He has a big graveyard to whistle past re: racism.
In general I think his world view has not changed since then per se, he has just expanded his hostility to a colour-blind contempt of all lower-IQ people.
I guess it’s a natural thing to do when the only good thing one has going is raw intelligence.
> The eternal schoolyard cliché of little boys pulling on little girl’s pigtails tells us everything we need to know about the fact that men get more pure pleasure from being mean than women do.
It doesn't tell us anything of the sort.
It just tells us that men prefer to do this with physical means.
Girls still get pleasure from being mean, but prefer to do it with ostracism, social exclusion, subordination, piling up, gossip and other such means.
Those can be just as hurtful as the quite innocent pulling of a ponytail - and last longer than some "mean boy" session. No shortage of girls driven to depression or even suicide by other young girls like that. There's reason the "mean girls" cliche exists.
Nick only reached this level of appeal after Charlie died. Kill the moderate, you inevitably give power to the radical. And moderate have been push so far it is pretty much dead. Now we are radical and more radical
In choosing to sacrifice young men at the altar of identity politics, Progressives took cheap shots to greedily shore up their expanding minority base. They assumed that men's response would be to skulk in the corner and bow their heads in mortification. Instead, opportunists like Fuentes created an army of testosterone-fueled rebellion. And the boxing ring of social media gets a new round of bludgeoning.
Exactly. The young, always and everywhere, will say things to outrage the olds. The screams about it are just as predictable. I was prepared to dislike Fuentes but instead was struck by how normal it seemed to be a pissed off young man in a time of scolds, porn and isolation. We dismiss these young men at our peril.
Fascinating insight that they’re dirtying the pen to keep others out.
What you say about shrinking of the private sphere reminds me of the retired British police officers convicted of sharing off-colour jokes in a private Whatsapp group. Their offence was to send ‘by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive…’ The act is from 2003 and could not have had in mind the exchanging of jokes in a Whatsapp group. Dare I say it’s Orw…
You’ll be aware, I’m sure, of the Men’s Sheds controversy: the demand to allow women into a space that was once reserved for vulnerable men. The recently appointed CEO in the UK is a woman who used to be at Stonewall. Last week I saw a segment on Newstalk radio titled, ‘The growing trend for women’s sheds’. You couldn’t make it up.
Have you seen ‘Dining with the Enemy’ on TV3? A mixture of right wing and woke participants shouting over each other at a dinner table. It’s mostly rubbish, but the different approaches to debate are revealing. The women are inclined to wave their arms in front of them, laugh derisively, say things like ‘woah, woah, woah’, and, of course, cry. It all feels distinctly American. (I will say one thing for the programme: it’s pretty radical in Ireland to encourage people to have controversial debates about immigration, gender, and others, and it may well help normalise it.)
I did see the TV3 I don’t like the sound of people arguing so I couldn’t bear it. That thing about the men’s sheds is hilarious, I wasn’t aware of that
Right, Nick Fuentes is like heavy metal Satanism in the 80s and gangsta rap in the 90s. What's the most offensive thing possible? Cool, I'll do that.
Without disagreeing I do think there’s more to it than that, I was trying to highlight a specific appeal that hadn’t been highlighted elsewhere. But yeah
> the fact that men get more pure pleasure from being mean than women do
I don’t think that’s true at all. Female cruelty is different though, and “woke” norms are an ideal weapon for it!
This may also explain part of your overall solid thesis – men, especially young and low-status men, are often downrange of feminine coded cruelty and groyperism is a loud, crude (male-coded!) way of returning fire.
There may of course be other elements to why Fuentes’ inner circle seems to be completely devoid of women!
Yeah you’re right, my underlying thought was right but I phrased it wrong. Too lazy to correct
And the outrage cycle will feed the outrage cycle. Everytime I open X it feels like digital 1914. It’s hard to see a way out for the culture. Maybe Mamdani will help 🥺? Anyone??
Mamdani and his weird smile represents an intensification of the problem if anything
What's sad to me, and what I wish young Gen Z guys had any concept of, is that Fuentes's entire schtick is what Rieff called a death-work. There's a gaping emptiness at the heart of the whole thing. Every bit he does is a meme overstaying its welcome. At the end of the day, it signifies nothing. But a generation of men without chests, in Lewis's words, won't be able to tell or care.
This is reasuring. If Fuentes is in the answer to something, maybe the problem is the question.
The trouble with setting up your own clubs is that the existing ones tend to be where the influence is. If men continue to vacate, say, the cultural sphere, won't this problem continue to worsen? And is it simply implausible that institutions will reverse their feminine slide (even with Trump in office)?
I think the problem will continue to worsen yes, personally I do think it’s implausible that there’ll be a reversal because of educational factors (women will have increasing power in legitimate institutions because they will be more highly educated). But who knows
Time to form our own bro colonies in deepest Siberia then
Are they though? They have a lot of years of schooling, but if I spend 10 years in postsecondary 2+2=5 land, in what sense am I more educated?
I know a lot of women who are actually interested and quite educated in real subjects, but they’re never part of the “highly educated” club.
Put another way, our common use of “meritocracy” conflates #yrs of gleichschaltung + a clown school exit cert with “merit”, but there are no ready proxies for substantial merit. That’s also why actual hiring work as opposed to paint-the-numbers HR is both an art and a science with which serious organizations struggle mightily.
Conor, I’m curious if you read this piece by Rufo? I think it’s the best post I’ve read on Fuentes this far
https://open.substack.com/pub/rufo/p/what-everyone-misses-about-nick-fuentes?r=1tg062&utm_medium=ios
I hadn’t Jeff thanks, I’ll give it a read
The counter culture became the culture. This of course created a new counter culture, and counter culture has a built-in status, this shift makes guys like Fuentes seem “cool” to younger guys. Also worth noting, I am 37 and have zero interest in Fuentes or that side of the new right, but even someone like me- pretty normal Christian guy- saying normal things is verboten to the mainstream culture today.
Another way to say the last part is, today, reality is offensive enough, you don’t have to add to it.
> there has been an incredible outpouring of interpretation of his popularity from respectable outlets, including prominent pieces in the New York Times, The Atlantic and the Washington Post
Is it genuine analysis or are they building up Fuentes to make him appear a bigger part of MAGA than he actually is?
I mean I don’t think they’re doing that, but it’s a popular theory
It’s not nearly this rational. It’s blind rage.
Indeed, it’s demonic.
Society has collectively invoked the spirits of identity, blood, and hatred.
The demons have come.
Sounds bad
Have you read Hannania's peice on Fuentes? I am not sure if your analysis compliments or contradicts his
I saw a bit of it, I must read it fully, thanks for reminding me. I’m not a huge fan- I would guess his take revolved around the awfulness of MAGA and stupidity of the modern right generally, which is somewhat in conflict with mine.
Yeah. He thinks the entire Republican Party is slipping into a racist world view that is the mirror image of wokism. It differs from your take, but maybe you are describing a deeper psychological cause (he suggests it's just stupidity) behind the shifting values he sees.
He has a big graveyard to whistle past re: racism.
In general I think his world view has not changed since then per se, he has just expanded his hostility to a colour-blind contempt of all lower-IQ people.
I guess it’s a natural thing to do when the only good thing one has going is raw intelligence.
And even that he over estimates.
I think he’s really fairly clever, just a worthless nihilist. Good preview for a world where AGI/ASI actually happens.
> The eternal schoolyard cliché of little boys pulling on little girl’s pigtails tells us everything we need to know about the fact that men get more pure pleasure from being mean than women do.
It doesn't tell us anything of the sort.
It just tells us that men prefer to do this with physical means.
Girls still get pleasure from being mean, but prefer to do it with ostracism, social exclusion, subordination, piling up, gossip and other such means.
Those can be just as hurtful as the quite innocent pulling of a ponytail - and last longer than some "mean boy" session. No shortage of girls driven to depression or even suicide by other young girls like that. There's reason the "mean girls" cliche exists.
Oh yeah I need to fix that. Thanks
Nick only reached this level of appeal after Charlie died. Kill the moderate, you inevitably give power to the radical. And moderate have been push so far it is pretty much dead. Now we are radical and more radical