Young Men in the Hate-o-Sphere

Recently, CBC ran a story about how the Poilievre Conservatives are touring Canadian universities to build support among young men. Conservative MP Jamil Jivani has been appointed for the job, and he’s using a familiar right-wing playbook made famous by Charlie Kirk. The focus is on reaching out to angry young men who believe they have been marginalized by the multicultural nature of Canadian society.

CBC explained that Charlie Kirk set up “free speech debates” by putting forward toxic claims like “Blacks go around for fun to target white people” or boasting that “Islam is not compatible with Western Civilization.”

CBC assured us that Kirk’s real purpose was the “free exchange of ideas.” Others would point out that his objective was to normalize extremist language as a form of political provocation.

The CBC profile portrayed Jivani as an “impassioned advocate” helping “struggling young men”. A number of those who attended the event self-identified as members of the Dominion Society of Canada — a group arguing for the forcible deportation of as many as 8 million people from Canada.

I had never heard of the Dominion Society. So I checked out some of the online presentations by their spokesmen. One TikTok post consisted of a guy making dumb-assed comments about how South Asians smell or talk too loudly in public. He bragged that intimidation from white people proves that “racism works.”

It was the kind of moron blather I heard in the locker rooms when I was in grade nine. These aren’t “ideas” — they are slurs.

Just a few months ago, it would have been shocking to hear anyone publicly arguing in Canada for the power to strip 8 million people of their legal rights and forcibly deport them. The violation of laws and the dignity of people through such mass violence would tear apart our legal and social fabric. But such extremist hate is now being promoted in marches, online forums and discussion groups with Conservative MPs.

MP Jivani may believe he is helping alienated young men but the failure to call out the deeply racist talk of mass deportations represents a concerning move by a public official.

It is equally concerning that CBC didn’t provide any back story on how Anti-hate groups have called out groups like Dominion for using the same white nationalist tactics being employed in other countries. CBC simply directed readers to Dominion’s webpage that framed mass forcible deportations under the benign term “remigration.”

As benign as “living space” (Lebensraum).

CBC says we are witnessing the emergence of a new “counterculture.”

Woah. Stop there. Calling for the forcible deportation of 8 million people does not represent a countercultural movement. It is a hate agenda.

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The Lost Boys

I was shaken up when I read the CBC article because, as I travel the country, the issue of the toxic radicalization of young men comes up again and again. I hear it from grandmothers worried about grandsons. Parents worried about teens.

Last week, I sat in on a discussion with teachers from across British Columbia who told me how hate language is becoming normalized in the classroom. They talked about students who casually throw around the “N” slur in class discussions. Or who rearrange the classroom desks in the form of a swastika. These students feel empowered to insult Indigenous students and educators. Or who make fun of immigrants while denigrating female students with misogynist slurs.

The teachers spoke of the devastatingly toxic impact such casual hate talk has on other students, particularly racialized, female or gender different. They also expressed the psychological harm they themselves experience from feeling alone in trying to set down basic ground rules for acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.

This rising level of toxic hate in the classroom is not some form of mid-21st-century madness. It is a project — a playbook by the far right.

And it began long before Charlie Kirk showed up.

Steve Bannon and Breitbart contributor Milo Yiannopoulos were early adopters. They had noticed how racist and deeply misogynistic language was bubbling up on the largely young male forum of 4 Chan. In its earliest form, racist hate and Nazi style language were used mainly for shock value. “Shit posting.” Boys being bad.

I wrote about this process in an earlier Substack piece.

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By 2016, these lost boy forums were being mined by the same crew that worked to bring Donald Trump into office. The effect was staggeringly effective.

In the book It Came from Something Awful, Dale Beran posed the question, “How did sad [online] nerds morph into Nazis?” He writes:

“In 2015, a resurgent Nazi-themed youth movement in the United States seemed unthinkable, let alone one aligned with a sitting US president. In 2016, it was a reality. And it was composed largely of young men on the fringes of a society they hated dearly.”

The first step in this transformation came when far-right political actors began exploiting the images and memes of online youth culture. Most notorious was the sad frog character “Pepe.” He went from being a lonely roommate playing video games to Pepe the mass shooter, Pepe the klansman, Pepe the Nazi. And then Team Trump turned Pepe the Frog into a Trump avatar.

The second step was the invasion of the school spaces. It began when Bannon encouraged Yiannopoulos to go to key American universities to create social confrontation by using extremist language as part of a “free speech” agenda. Their first target was the University of California, Berkeley — famous for the “free speech” protests of the early 1960s.

Those free speech protests were about students’ right to organize for the civil rights movement and against the Vietnam War.

Yiannopoulos’ notion of free speech was hosting forums that claimed young feminists were a form of cancer. When progressive students came out to protest the use of university space for such provocations, the right, with their red MAGA hats, showed up to fight the “liberal social justice warriors.” Provocation was the point, and it succeeded.

Inspired by the Berkeley chaos, other right-wing provocateurs like Gavin McGinnis of the street-fighting gang Proud Boys and Anne Coulter began their own tours. Yiannopoulos continued to Portland and other cities. Counterprotests met counter-counterprotests, and the “free speech” tour descended into street violence.

In Seattle, a right-wing participant shot a protester. As the violence spilled out into the street, Yiannopolis and his band of young supporters escaped on a tour bus where they ate ice cream and drank root beer.

In Portland, the far right announced their decision to host a free speech event in the aftermath of a vicious murder of two men who tried to stop a Nazi who was insulting racialized women on public transit.

This rising escalation ultimately led to the horrific violence in Charlottesville. This was another planned provocation where Nazis, bikers, Proud Boys and KKK showed up to protest the taking down of a Civil War statue. They were joined by radicalized teenage boys decked out in long robes, goggles, homemade shields, Dungeons and Dragons-type swords and a frog flag. The boys had shown up to participate in the clashes against their perceived enemy — local Black people, progressives and anti-fascist protesters.

The result was a horrific vehicle assault that led to a young woman being murdered by a rage-filled young male INCEL.

Through it all, Bannon and the far right honed a message that hate language was “free speech.” Any effort to counter the hate language was proof that white people were being oppressed by intolerant universities and schools. In the emerging manosphere of podcasts and influencers, the provocateurs were presented as truth tellers and young white men, the victims of oppression.

The MAPLE MAGA Conservatives have taken up this agenda with Poilievre ranting about “woke” universities and the need to cut off funding to schools that hamper “free speech.” His online posts were embedded with the extreme misogynist tagline #MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way).

The tagline is a notorious dog whistle for hate INCELs.

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/1923009/poilievre-faces-calls-to-apologize-explain-misogynist-youtube-tags

It is within these political machinations that Jivani’s tour is taking place. However, CBC left out the backstory. They presented it as outreach to young men who are victimized by “super-charged identity politics” that leaves them feeling “alienated” because they can’t “freely speak their minds.”

But hate slurs do not represent “free speech” — they are acts of intimidation. Real freedom of speech is based on the fair exchange of ideas, which can only happen when there is a respect for the dignity of all who participate in a discussion or debate.

Degrading someone because of their race, sex, or immigrant status is a deliberate attack on the personal dignity of people who deserve the right to have their freedom of space and thought protected as well. The so-called “free speech” ragers represent the antithesis of freedom of expression.

There have always been toxic jocks. What we are seeing today is something profoundly different. The difference lies in two key elements: online radicalization and cynical political exploitation.

Ten years ago, the media were awash with stories of online radicalization of young people by ISIS and Muslim extremists. And yet, there have been almost no conversations about how to de-radicalize young white men falling into the manosphere. Adding to this are the deliberate provocations by MAGA and MAPLE MAGA agitators to trigger rage in a young demographic.

For example, on the very day I was speaking with BC teachers about dealing with young people who storm out of classrooms during Indigenous land acknowledgements, a BC MLA was introducing legislation to outlaw land acknowledgements in schools.

The MLA knew their proposal wouldn’t pass. They weren’t serious. They were using the legislature as a provocation, deliberately focusing on the classroom. The message is being heard by 15-year-olds who now feel empowered to insult elders and refuse to acknowledge Indigenous rights in Canada.

The issue of a radicalized manosphere goes way beyond politics. There are serious implications for democracy, families and Canadian society. 

Young people have many reasons to feel uncertain and alienated, and this must be acknowledged and addressed. But pulling young men out of the manosphere will require significant social engagement.

We need public conversations that go beyond drive-by tourism pieces in the mainstream media. Fascists always do well when the media treats hate as merely a “he said-she said” problem.

The other major issue will be identifying the cynical players who are fanning the flames of radicalization and then ensuring they are defeated. That will require good and decent people stepping up to run for library boards, school councils, school boards, civic positions and parliament.

And finally, it will come down to each of us to find ways to be a guardrail for friends, families, and co-workers, helping them from falling into the darkness.

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