This article is fantasy. Populism is best understood as a reaction to the failures of globalization and the corruption and incompetence of the elite class including the experts. Covid put all of that on display. The Epstein files are a marvelous sequel. The president of Harvard and economist big wig! Obama's White House attorney and Goldman Sachs general counsel! Former POTUS and head of Clinton Global initiative! The list is endless.
I am a woman, well educated, feminist and I am a populist. And I know men who are well educated like me, as well as guys with only a high school degree who are all populists. Our populism was inspired by seeing our towns destroyed by globalization, our factories close and move to China. All the while, the elites push an increasingly radical cultural narrative around anti-racism, transgenderism, green virtue signaling, and mass immigration. That was just a cover for their looting of our economy.
No, we dont admire Putin. On the contrary, American populists are mostly anti-authoritarian. We don't like strong and aggressive central government telling us what to do. We saw during covid just how incompetent and corrupt the so called expert class is. We are smart enough to realize that Putin and Orban are authoritarians, just a different flavor from the would be authoritarians in the west.
Isabelle, your point about the visceral reality of "towns destroyed" is the only one that actually accounts for the sheer scale of the catastrophe unfolding in the American interior.
While Gunitsky attempts to pathologize populism as a niche "incel" grievance, the data on Deaths of Despair suggests he is missing the forest for the trees. Since 1980, the Rust Belt has seen a 332% larger increase in deaths from suicide, overdose, and alcohol-related disease compared to the Coasts. We are talking about an annual "excess death" toll of approximately 160,000 people. A number that dwarfs the casualties of every war in our history.
By labeling these preventable deaths as a "gendered grievance," elites can continue to ignore the fact that for many, the "Trump Wrecking Ball" isn't a political choice. It’s a desperate act of self-defense against a system that has become a terminal risk to their lives. When will they heed their own call to, "Stop blaming the victims!"?
I absolutely agree. And the Democrat party needs to wake up to this. I just copy/pasted this from THE GUARDIAN ( so no suspicion of right wing bias) about the French elections, " last month’s municipal elections, in which the left held on to most big cities while conservatives or the far-right National Rally (RN) hoovered up smaller towns." OK, so this invalidates the thesis of the article above. Obviously there are not more "incels" living the smaller cities and towns. That is not what is driving the populist surge.
"No, we dont admire Putin. On the contrary, American populists are mostly anti-authoritarian. We don't like strong and aggressive central government telling us what to do."
Then for the love of god, stop choosing authoritarians! Was Nikki Haley really the more authoritarian choice? I think you are mistaken about just how "anti-authoritarian" the populist movement is. They are anti-elite far more than they are anti-authoritarian.
Otherwise, I agree the article is mistaken. It seems to confuse correlation with causation while flattening a rather diverse set of people into one pattern. The pattern does exist, but I don't think they have made their case that it is the most important (or even a particularly important) driver.
Nikki Haley was a neo-con. I will grant you that Trump disappointed on free speech ( and on no more foreign wars). But libertarian impulses have always been a part of the republican coalition. And as for authoritarianism, you have to understand that for people like me, the democrats have become horribly authoritarian. This was on full display from 2020-2023. Example: Gavin Newsom had people arrested for walking on the beach - and that contined months into the pandemic. Schools were closed in blue states for up to TWO YEARS! ( even though Florida opened schools after a few months - as did most of Europe). Toddlers were masked in NY head start for THREE YEARS!
And then there is the mrna "vaccine"- not really a vaccine, a gene therapy product. It was mandated for employment and other activities mostly in Blue states. Young pregnant women with no fear of covid were forced to get two or more of these shots to keep their jobs. Forced to get a new experimental vaccine that was meant to permanently or semi permanently change their immune system! . What can be more intimately fascist and authoritarian than that?
I think the author conflates the desire for some men to live like traditional men, and the desire by some men to repress women. The former does not require the latter necessarily. Some aspects of modernity (ie feminism) equate and demonize both, and that is an error. If we want to reconcile society, we need to be nuanced on these matters.
Just another article using the extremes of the so-called manosphere to paint every man who is opposing the increasing feminization of modern societies as a reactionary misogynist. Instead of talking about these people maybe try to talk to some reasonable critics of the current cultural landscape? Try Richard Reeves, Arne Hoffmann from Germany, Helen Lewis. To me this article falls way short of the usual great standard that Persuasion publishes.
I think there is a lot of truth to what the article says. But I wish it would account for the Rassemblement National in France, which is headed by a woman (or maybe two women, if you count Marion Maréchal-Le Pen), and Fratelli d'Italia, which is headed Giorgia Meloni. What does it mean that two of the most important European populist movements are led by women? How does this figure in?
It’s much more than that. Alice Weidel and to a lesser extent Sanae Takaichi both also exemplify the same thing. I think male resentment is almost totally unconnected to the wave of right-wing populism.
“The elevation of women is the great achievement of modernity, and probably what makes modern life tolerable compared to much that came before. But it also by definition requires the partial feminization of traditional social structure”
I agree with much of this sentiment. Partial feminization has genuinely brought gains, and there are portions of society which still could go farther. However, the feminization has been applied unevenly. Many sectors, particularly education and academia with honorable mentions to journalism and entertainment, have gone far past partial feminization to almost complete feminization. It is undeniable that there has been a cultural overshoot which needs to be rolled back to a point of optimality. Women and femininity have won, and gained lasting and meaningful gains for themselves and the US (the world as a whole is of course mixed). There is a reluctance to acknowledge this and feel secure in culture’s change, but if things do not start moving back in the right direction - equality - resentment will only, and rightfully, grow.
Was Fidel Castro a populist? How about Hugo Chavez? Chantal Mouffe called for a populism of the left for the simple reason that “le principal clivage dans nos sociétés est celui qui sépare les « perdants » des « gagnants » de la mondialisation et que leur intérêts ne peuvent être réconciliés.” I dont believe she is part of the manosphere, but rather she recognizes that there are winners and losers with globalization. Working class men have been big losers. The anti-globalists at The Battle of Seattle a quarter of a century ago were predominantly leftist. I don’t know whether or not they were populists. It seems that they were largely correct on many fronts.
In Capital et Idéologie Piketty dismissed the word populism as a « terme fourre-tout souvent utilisé par les élites pour disqualifier des mouvements politiques dont ils ne se sentent insuffisamment aux commandes. » I think he was right.
Ultimately, the fact that men are aggressive should surprise no one. That men should pursue manly pursuits is not a revelation. Neither should we be surprised that online influencers are often greedy and vulgar. That probably means that there is room for more traditional podcasts focused on gentlemanly behavior and books about travel and adventure. We should start by erasing the term « man cave » from our vocabulary. I’m going to go work out now.
"the fact that men are aggressive should surprise no one. That men should pursue manly pursuits is not a revelation."
I think part of the problem is that this does seem to surprise (or at least dismay) a considerable fraction of the educated prestige class, at least here in the US.
Good Points. Michié is another reference who has been calling for a leftwing populism for 20 years and his critique of modern global green neoliberal leftism has been prescient.
After more than a decade of pathologizing all masculine-coded behavior and preferences, what did we expect? Men are not dysfunctional women, and it was a cruel abuse of institutional power to try and convince them that they are.
It seems to me, and this is gonna' make my wife mad at me again, that evolutionary biology has patterned females as needing to be taken care of, and males to do the taking care of.
The feminist dream of male domination is not only doomed to failure, but even equality is likely not an achievable goal... as males and females are different... they can never be equal.
My view for optimizing gender relations and outcomes is to accept:
- There are two genders: male and female
- Both genders are different and thus cannot be equal
- Both genders should have absolute life-choice as long as they don't harm others
I think the "freedom to choose" was the actual target that feminism should have aimed for, hit and then went away.
I agree that "freedom to choose" is the only justifiable goal. But we all need to support women (and men) in their choices. Removing gender stereotypes and treating people as individuals is a necessary step.
There is no ONE cause of anything ... but we really overlook the need for people to feel secure in their place when analyzing disruptive movements like the modern populist wave. Lots of people focus on economic displacement to explain populism, but social displacement is a major cause. One small example -- when people sit in classrooms without assigned seats, they gravitate toward the same seat/area. If someone "takes" their seat, they are unhappy/uncomfortable. Even without the dominance/subordination narrative, there is discomfort in change. Traditional gender roles are very comfortable for people (even women) who desire that kind of stability, even where navigating 'the devil you know'. Today's populist leaders find support from all kinds of people, each with their own reasons, but this article articulates one cause that I have personally believed in for a while. In the US, I'd also add the overreach by the progressive left in their thought-policing around language and expression as another cause that is also less articulated than the uber-masculine appeal of the strongman.
It seems I'm in a very small minority of "completely masculine" men well and truly baffled. See my masculinity was formed in a time where it was not masculine to use spray tan, or care about your appearance over much, or bitch and moan and make excuses.
I have never paid for a haircut and I have never paid an auto mechanic. I find grooming a burden forced upon me. I ended up as a manual laborer because it was the only work that felt real. I spent my youth getting into fights over petty matters of justice and honor.
The Trump era has stunned me. Absolutely stunned me. Masculinity meant physical courage, stoic acceptance of personal misfortune, absolute fidelity to your word, a personal code and a belief in the primacy of honor.
My masculinity is Aurelius'. It's Pericles. It was Pat Ewing and Don Mattingly. It was a commitment to do ones best without making a big fucking deal about it because doing your best was expected.
This era has been deeply confusing to me, as a dude. A regular dude who drives a pickup truck and builds an extra room himself because that's the kind of shit a dude does.
"Masculinity meant physical courage, stoic acceptance of personal misfortune, absolute fidelity to your word, a personal code and a belief in the primacy of honor."
It still does mean this. And women can have these virtues also. Forget about the spray tan and influencers, those are for poseurs.
I think there may be a bit of a correlation-causation problem here. It may be a little bit this, but it is probably also the kind of personality most likely to assert itself when it does not fit or thrive within the modern paradigm. You can see versions of the same dynamic in some women too - aligning with these men, or acting out a feminized version of the same grievance-driven, attention-seeking posture. At least part of this is probably just about who is willing to make a scene.
Bad actors can certainly use human emotions as a tool to gain power and this could be a case of that.
Another example is women being induced to give up their rights to single sex spaces and sports under the 'be kind' manipulation of the transgender movement.
AntiFeminist (Toxic Masculinity or Manosphere) verses AntiMaculinist (Toxic Femininity or FauxWoke) are a part of the problem IMHO but what about the other 90% of Humanity? =)
This article is fantasy. Populism is best understood as a reaction to the failures of globalization and the corruption and incompetence of the elite class including the experts. Covid put all of that on display. The Epstein files are a marvelous sequel. The president of Harvard and economist big wig! Obama's White House attorney and Goldman Sachs general counsel! Former POTUS and head of Clinton Global initiative! The list is endless.
I am a woman, well educated, feminist and I am a populist. And I know men who are well educated like me, as well as guys with only a high school degree who are all populists. Our populism was inspired by seeing our towns destroyed by globalization, our factories close and move to China. All the while, the elites push an increasingly radical cultural narrative around anti-racism, transgenderism, green virtue signaling, and mass immigration. That was just a cover for their looting of our economy.
No, we dont admire Putin. On the contrary, American populists are mostly anti-authoritarian. We don't like strong and aggressive central government telling us what to do. We saw during covid just how incompetent and corrupt the so called expert class is. We are smart enough to realize that Putin and Orban are authoritarians, just a different flavor from the would be authoritarians in the west.
Poul
Isabelle, your point about the visceral reality of "towns destroyed" is the only one that actually accounts for the sheer scale of the catastrophe unfolding in the American interior.
While Gunitsky attempts to pathologize populism as a niche "incel" grievance, the data on Deaths of Despair suggests he is missing the forest for the trees. Since 1980, the Rust Belt has seen a 332% larger increase in deaths from suicide, overdose, and alcohol-related disease compared to the Coasts. We are talking about an annual "excess death" toll of approximately 160,000 people. A number that dwarfs the casualties of every war in our history.
By labeling these preventable deaths as a "gendered grievance," elites can continue to ignore the fact that for many, the "Trump Wrecking Ball" isn't a political choice. It’s a desperate act of self-defense against a system that has become a terminal risk to their lives. When will they heed their own call to, "Stop blaming the victims!"?
I absolutely agree. And the Democrat party needs to wake up to this. I just copy/pasted this from THE GUARDIAN ( so no suspicion of right wing bias) about the French elections, " last month’s municipal elections, in which the left held on to most big cities while conservatives or the far-right National Rally (RN) hoovered up smaller towns." OK, so this invalidates the thesis of the article above. Obviously there are not more "incels" living the smaller cities and towns. That is not what is driving the populist surge.
"No, we dont admire Putin. On the contrary, American populists are mostly anti-authoritarian. We don't like strong and aggressive central government telling us what to do."
Then for the love of god, stop choosing authoritarians! Was Nikki Haley really the more authoritarian choice? I think you are mistaken about just how "anti-authoritarian" the populist movement is. They are anti-elite far more than they are anti-authoritarian.
Otherwise, I agree the article is mistaken. It seems to confuse correlation with causation while flattening a rather diverse set of people into one pattern. The pattern does exist, but I don't think they have made their case that it is the most important (or even a particularly important) driver.
Nikki Haley was a neo-con. I will grant you that Trump disappointed on free speech ( and on no more foreign wars). But libertarian impulses have always been a part of the republican coalition. And as for authoritarianism, you have to understand that for people like me, the democrats have become horribly authoritarian. This was on full display from 2020-2023. Example: Gavin Newsom had people arrested for walking on the beach - and that contined months into the pandemic. Schools were closed in blue states for up to TWO YEARS! ( even though Florida opened schools after a few months - as did most of Europe). Toddlers were masked in NY head start for THREE YEARS!
And then there is the mrna "vaccine"- not really a vaccine, a gene therapy product. It was mandated for employment and other activities mostly in Blue states. Young pregnant women with no fear of covid were forced to get two or more of these shots to keep their jobs. Forced to get a new experimental vaccine that was meant to permanently or semi permanently change their immune system! . What can be more intimately fascist and authoritarian than that?
Thank you. Well said.
I think the author conflates the desire for some men to live like traditional men, and the desire by some men to repress women. The former does not require the latter necessarily. Some aspects of modernity (ie feminism) equate and demonize both, and that is an error. If we want to reconcile society, we need to be nuanced on these matters.
Just another article using the extremes of the so-called manosphere to paint every man who is opposing the increasing feminization of modern societies as a reactionary misogynist. Instead of talking about these people maybe try to talk to some reasonable critics of the current cultural landscape? Try Richard Reeves, Arne Hoffmann from Germany, Helen Lewis. To me this article falls way short of the usual great standard that Persuasion publishes.
I think there is a lot of truth to what the article says. But I wish it would account for the Rassemblement National in France, which is headed by a woman (or maybe two women, if you count Marion Maréchal-Le Pen), and Fratelli d'Italia, which is headed Giorgia Meloni. What does it mean that two of the most important European populist movements are led by women? How does this figure in?
It’s much more than that. Alice Weidel and to a lesser extent Sanae Takaichi both also exemplify the same thing. I think male resentment is almost totally unconnected to the wave of right-wing populism.
“The elevation of women is the great achievement of modernity, and probably what makes modern life tolerable compared to much that came before. But it also by definition requires the partial feminization of traditional social structure”
I agree with much of this sentiment. Partial feminization has genuinely brought gains, and there are portions of society which still could go farther. However, the feminization has been applied unevenly. Many sectors, particularly education and academia with honorable mentions to journalism and entertainment, have gone far past partial feminization to almost complete feminization. It is undeniable that there has been a cultural overshoot which needs to be rolled back to a point of optimality. Women and femininity have won, and gained lasting and meaningful gains for themselves and the US (the world as a whole is of course mixed). There is a reluctance to acknowledge this and feel secure in culture’s change, but if things do not start moving back in the right direction - equality - resentment will only, and rightfully, grow.
Was Fidel Castro a populist? How about Hugo Chavez? Chantal Mouffe called for a populism of the left for the simple reason that “le principal clivage dans nos sociétés est celui qui sépare les « perdants » des « gagnants » de la mondialisation et que leur intérêts ne peuvent être réconciliés.” I dont believe she is part of the manosphere, but rather she recognizes that there are winners and losers with globalization. Working class men have been big losers. The anti-globalists at The Battle of Seattle a quarter of a century ago were predominantly leftist. I don’t know whether or not they were populists. It seems that they were largely correct on many fronts.
In Capital et Idéologie Piketty dismissed the word populism as a « terme fourre-tout souvent utilisé par les élites pour disqualifier des mouvements politiques dont ils ne se sentent insuffisamment aux commandes. » I think he was right.
Ultimately, the fact that men are aggressive should surprise no one. That men should pursue manly pursuits is not a revelation. Neither should we be surprised that online influencers are often greedy and vulgar. That probably means that there is room for more traditional podcasts focused on gentlemanly behavior and books about travel and adventure. We should start by erasing the term « man cave » from our vocabulary. I’m going to go work out now.
"the fact that men are aggressive should surprise no one. That men should pursue manly pursuits is not a revelation."
I think part of the problem is that this does seem to surprise (or at least dismay) a considerable fraction of the educated prestige class, at least here in the US.
Good Points. Michié is another reference who has been calling for a leftwing populism for 20 years and his critique of modern global green neoliberal leftism has been prescient.
After more than a decade of pathologizing all masculine-coded behavior and preferences, what did we expect? Men are not dysfunctional women, and it was a cruel abuse of institutional power to try and convince them that they are.
It seems to me, and this is gonna' make my wife mad at me again, that evolutionary biology has patterned females as needing to be taken care of, and males to do the taking care of.
The feminist dream of male domination is not only doomed to failure, but even equality is likely not an achievable goal... as males and females are different... they can never be equal.
My view for optimizing gender relations and outcomes is to accept:
- There are two genders: male and female
- Both genders are different and thus cannot be equal
- Both genders should have absolute life-choice as long as they don't harm others
I think the "freedom to choose" was the actual target that feminism should have aimed for, hit and then went away.
I agree that "freedom to choose" is the only justifiable goal. But we all need to support women (and men) in their choices. Removing gender stereotypes and treating people as individuals is a necessary step.
There is no ONE cause of anything ... but we really overlook the need for people to feel secure in their place when analyzing disruptive movements like the modern populist wave. Lots of people focus on economic displacement to explain populism, but social displacement is a major cause. One small example -- when people sit in classrooms without assigned seats, they gravitate toward the same seat/area. If someone "takes" their seat, they are unhappy/uncomfortable. Even without the dominance/subordination narrative, there is discomfort in change. Traditional gender roles are very comfortable for people (even women) who desire that kind of stability, even where navigating 'the devil you know'. Today's populist leaders find support from all kinds of people, each with their own reasons, but this article articulates one cause that I have personally believed in for a while. In the US, I'd also add the overreach by the progressive left in their thought-policing around language and expression as another cause that is also less articulated than the uber-masculine appeal of the strongman.
It seems I'm in a very small minority of "completely masculine" men well and truly baffled. See my masculinity was formed in a time where it was not masculine to use spray tan, or care about your appearance over much, or bitch and moan and make excuses.
I have never paid for a haircut and I have never paid an auto mechanic. I find grooming a burden forced upon me. I ended up as a manual laborer because it was the only work that felt real. I spent my youth getting into fights over petty matters of justice and honor.
The Trump era has stunned me. Absolutely stunned me. Masculinity meant physical courage, stoic acceptance of personal misfortune, absolute fidelity to your word, a personal code and a belief in the primacy of honor.
My masculinity is Aurelius'. It's Pericles. It was Pat Ewing and Don Mattingly. It was a commitment to do ones best without making a big fucking deal about it because doing your best was expected.
This era has been deeply confusing to me, as a dude. A regular dude who drives a pickup truck and builds an extra room himself because that's the kind of shit a dude does.
I'll never understand it.
"Masculinity meant physical courage, stoic acceptance of personal misfortune, absolute fidelity to your word, a personal code and a belief in the primacy of honor."
It still does mean this. And women can have these virtues also. Forget about the spray tan and influencers, those are for poseurs.
I think there may be a bit of a correlation-causation problem here. It may be a little bit this, but it is probably also the kind of personality most likely to assert itself when it does not fit or thrive within the modern paradigm. You can see versions of the same dynamic in some women too - aligning with these men, or acting out a feminized version of the same grievance-driven, attention-seeking posture. At least part of this is probably just about who is willing to make a scene.
Bad actors can certainly use human emotions as a tool to gain power and this could be a case of that.
Another example is women being induced to give up their rights to single sex spaces and sports under the 'be kind' manipulation of the transgender movement.
The most female-supporting people are those that reject the current 3rd wave feminist agenda.
AntiFeminist (Toxic Masculinity or Manosphere) verses AntiMaculinist (Toxic Femininity or FauxWoke) are a part of the problem IMHO but what about the other 90% of Humanity? =)