Men: Can't Live With Them, Can't Fight A Civil War Without Them
Bottom line: if you’re worried about extremism and radicalization of men, everything we’re doing now is making things worse.
Though things certainly haven’t been peaceful, reaction to the overturning of Roe v. Wade last Friday hasn’t been overly uproarious, either. We’ve managed to escape the weekend without serious unrest, so I’d say we’ve weathered the first of many storms to come. Though we’re still in the early stages of post-Roe America, any time we can escape major violence it ought to be seen as a good thing.
On Saturday, I was reading the blog of one of my favorite writers, Rod Dreher, and came across this passage from him. He was quoting a reader who’d shared his thoughts on where he saw post-Roe America headed. In short, it’s pretty different and more “normal” from my view of what the future has in store (bold mine):
A reader writes that he doesn’t expect mass violence over Dobbs — not an abortion-related repeat of the George Floyd riots. Those riots were carried out by black people and white antifa. The kind of demographic most upset over the fall of Roe — educated middle class women — will never risk their professional status to commit acts of criminal violence, he predicts.
Rather:
We’re going to see that overturning Dobbs and restoring Roe is going to become the next litmus test for middle-class respectability. BLM/CRT, LGBT, and now this. Every major corporation is going to have to announce a policy to pay the freight of women employees who go out of state to have abortions. Every major authority figure is going to have to be onside on this issue, or face the kind of hysterical ostracism that we’ve seen around other issues.
Interestingly, they don’t seem to think that abortion hysteria is enough. Now we’re seeing them go crazy on gay marriage, interracial marriage, and contraception. They’ll believe anything, no matter what the realities are on the ground (which is that if any of those issues were returned to the political process, they would all be voted into law almost instantly, everywhere). No, the abortion hysterics will simply call this, one more time, the Civil Rights Issue Of Our Time, replay the old script, and wait for the Republican Party to crack — something the business and donor class of the GOP is already prepared to do.
It is really something to think about how the Left today, post-Dobbs, is left to feel the same things that many of us on the Right have felt over and over again: defeat on an issue that is dear to us. They are not used to losing — not our ruling class. They are used to getting their way, and expecting the rest of us to fall in line and know our places.
I can’t really disagree with what this reader said here. Though I prefer the term “professional-managerial class,” or PMC, over “middle-class,” we’re both talking about the same thing. However, I’ve also maintained that it’s not really the PMCs who are going to be fighting the coming civil war.
I’ve spoken at length about “anarcho-tyranny” and how it not only will define the character of the coming (dis)order, but is already in place as we speak. Central to the implementation of anarcho-tyranny is the use of proxies - the violent criminal doesn’t work for the Regime, but the Regime is able to enable and abet criminals to do the dirty work of de facto enforcing its dictates.
There’s also a steadily increasing number of left-wing militants, many of them armed, who are willing to use violence to terrorize the country. Many of them comprise Antifa, the most prominent left-wing militant group in the country, but there are others, including pro-abortion extremist group Jane’s Revenge, who’s been responsible for issuing threats and vandalizing pregnancy support centers. We saw some of them come out of the woodwork this past weekend:
Here’s footage of a left-wing militant using a makeshift flamethrower against police officers in Los Angeles (he was arrested):
We’re far from June 2020 in the U.S. or July 20201 in South Africa, but there’s still plenty of violence and people willing to do violence. This means educated PMC women don’t need to do any of the fighting themselves because they have so many others out there willing to do so on their behalf, wittingly or unwittingly. Most Americans aren’t extremists and would rather not engage in violence, cognizant of the consequences for doing so.
However, in this state of heightened tensions, do you think educated PMC women, angry over the overturning of Roe v. Wade, wouldn’t cheer from the sidelines as Catholic churches and pregnancy support centers were vandalized or, worse, burned, as form of retribution? Do you think educated PMC women, or the Left in general, wouldn’t celebrate if something bad happened to Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas, who are now considered members of an “extremist Supreme Court,” according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:
Note that Pelosi repeats the lie that abortion was a constitutional right. Also take note of the fact Pelosi, as Speaker of the House, is second in the line of succession to the presidency and, like Biden, has all but declared the Supreme Court an illegitimate institution. If you can’t see how dangerous the situation has become, you’re a hopeless individual and who will be totally lost and left in the wilderness when a serious political crisis occurs in this country.
I realize I’m leveling some grave accusations against my fellow Americans. However, I assure you, it’s not without reason. Two years ago this summer, I saw people I used to know posting in social media their support for the civil unrest and even the violence we saw unfold in the wake of George Floyd’s death while in police custody. The mood in this country has changed dramatically and while much of it may be “kayfabe,” in the sense social media incentivizes saying the outrageous because it generates “pop” or “heat,” to use pro wrestling terminology, thereby increasing one’s profile. But I also believe there’s genuine sentiments fueling these remarks. I mentioned this study from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) revealing alarmingly high percentages of younger Democrats and Republicans favoring politically-motivated violence, including assassination:
If that many younger Democratic men are willing to get their hands dirty, why wouldn’t younger Democratic women, who are a core demographic of the educated PMC, have an easy time finding warm bodies eager to wage civil war on their behalf?
Something I’ve mentioned in a few entries is how the American Left is the side which has become more radical in the last decade, even though the media spends all its time talking about the supposed epidemic of extremism on the Right. Likewise, the media focuses on the political radicalization of young men, but what the data tells is a far different story. A pollster named Daniel Cox shows that young men have remained more or less consistent over time in terms of identifying as “liberal.” Young women, however, have become far more liberal during the same time frame, with a great divergence emerging in the early-2010s (though Cox sees it happening post-2016):
To describe this as “radicalization” might be a stretch. However, it shows that if either sex is shifting more firmly to one side of the political divide, it’s women and they’re shifting Left. I’ll let readers delve more deeply into why that might be, though I’d argue that the increasing “feminization” of our society has resulted in women benefiting tremendously in terms of career prospects, educational attainment, and developing a political identity around this. Coupled with the general leftward shift of our culture and politics over the last 30 years, it would seem only rational for women to align themselves with the side whose ascendance to power has correlated with women not only achieving equity with men, but surpassing them in many ways.
There are major implications to this striking political divide which has emerged between men and women. For now, the most concerning aspect is that the internal armed conflict brewing inside America could have a gender dynamic to it: young women not only become increasingly leftist, but as a result become the Regime’s political base, perhaps going as far as to support persecution or even waging war against dissidents standing in opposition to the Regime.
If young left-wing women want a war, they’ve got plenty of men on their side willing to go out and fight it for them. This couldn’t possibly be good for gender relations, nor could it be good for women - they may be a demoralized bunch right now, but with the right leadership and a sense of purpose, history shows there’s no force more potent than a mass of men on a mission. The 1999 cult classic film Fight Club explored what happens when alienated, demoralized men are brought out of their despair by a charismatic leader who knows how they feel, doesn’t hide the truth from them, gives them an outlet for their frustrations, provides them discipline and structure, and something to work towards.
Okay, maybe I’m taking things a bit too far here. Lets take a few steps back. What I’m getting at is we’re seeing the early stages of something that could, in theory, disintegrate society. Civilization survives through reproduction and the formation is families is the foundation upon which civilization rests. Without healthy relations between the sexes, how will any of this take place? Marriage rates are falling, the total fertility rate (TFR) is below replacement level, so it’s not like we’re not seeing the consequences of a society that’s become atomized and sexual freedom has become something so sacred, it’s worth enshrining into law.
Look at what’s happening to South Korea. With one of the lowest rates of marriage and TFR in the developed world, it’s now having a political impact:
Conservatives in South Korea should be in a tricky position. The nation is currently led by a liberal — who is the most popular president in its democratic history. Moon Jae-in’s administration oversaw one of the world’s best responses to the pandemic, and under his leadership the Korean economy has been roaring, even as much of the developed world has struggled. The last conservative president, meanwhile, was disastrous: Park Geun-hye was impeached, removed from office and later convicted for corruption.
And yet, with the presidential election less than a month away, the conservative candidate Yoon Seok-yeol is showing a slight edge in polling over his liberal rival Lee Jae-myung. How have the country’s conservatives been able to regroup in just five years?
A major reason for this resurgence is the sharp conservative turn of young South Korean men, who are increasingly animated by aggressive misogyny and anti-feminism. These young men have found their champion in Lee Jun-seok, a 36-year-old, Harvard-educated political pundit who became the leader of the conservative opposition party last summer. Warning of the “totalitarian tendency” of feminism and accusing the ruling Democratic Party of fixating on a “pro-woman agenda”, Lee and his supporters have injected a jolt of energy into the South Korean Right.
Flash-forward to today: Yoon Seok-yeol is now South Korea’s president.
Though she’d bristle at the notion of Yoon as an “incel president,” Naama Kates explains very well what happens when you have large numbers of young men who feel left out, left behind, and made into social pariahs:
It stands to reason that the high rate of “sexlessness” in Korean adults – particularly young men, though it’s high across genders and age groups which is probably indicative of a nationwide unipolar depression — may very well alter people’s overall sense of well-being, fulfilment and belonging in the world, and thus, their political beliefs as well. But there is no evidence that the issue of sexlessness or celibacy played any role in this election. Despite their best efforts, not a single journalist was able to furnish a quote from anyone hoping to finally get laid under the Yoon administration. So we’re really not talking about an “incel movement” at all. And when a term has implicit associations with violent extremism, flippantly using it to describe a group of young men whose views one finds abhorrent is ill-advised.
Unfortunately, the term has become shorthand for exactly that: angry young men with bad political takes. These are men who feel marginalised, who don’t have families, who are struggling to find purpose and their place in life. Many of them are unemployed, underemployed, or struggling in school. In the West, they’re often described as white or working class, and they live in progressive, economically developed societies. They probably also live in a society where income inequality is growing and unemployment rates are high.
That profile fits for incels, at least for the media’s portrayal of them, and it fits for the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers, and also for extremists on the far Left – such as Antifa’s Black Bloc. Details about race and class vary depending on the cultural context, but the fact that young men with nothing to lose is the demographic most likely to embrace a radical or subversive new political ideology is consistently true, and it has been throughout history.
In The True Believer, published in 1951, Eric Hoffer brilliantly described the conditions that compelled people to join “mass movements” of social or political protest with Twenties Germany as the backdrop. Mass movements appeal to people who feel powerless and unappreciated in their lives and who tend to externalise their frustrations rather than looking inward. The group most likely to embrace a radical new ideology is one Hoffer called the New Poor, who may in fact be middle class, but perceive a recent loss in income, social status, or security that was out of their control.
Hoffer’s account was written in response to the turn toward Communism and Fascism, but extreme or subversive political movements have been drawing in a new crop of New Poor with remarkable agility over the past decade, with the aid of technology. Social media and alternative platforms have given independent content creators and their ideas exposure to a global audience of like-minded fans who can instantly communicate with each other. These platforms have also contributed to and benefited from a climate of hyperpolarisation by promoting provocative, contentious speech.
Bottom line: if you’re worried about extremism and radicalization of men, everything we’re doing now is making things worse.
There’s so much more to discuss on this topic and we’re now starting to drift outside the scope of what I tend to focus on. But I sincerely hope you, readers, are understanding that the abortion issue isn’t an ignition source for the coming internal armed conflict just because it’s a loaded topic. It’s unfolding against a backdrop of a country where men and women are diverging and large numbers of radicalized young men are becoming available to be recruited on both sides to wage a violent conflict. As this blog’s title says, we’re not there, but you can see it from here and that should concern us all.
Wherever you stand, it’s imperative to keep talking about this issue because there’s so much more at stake than sexual freedom. Refuse to be cowed by extremists like this:
Remember: as they demand your silence, these people would just as soon accept your willingness to kill and die on their behalf. Let’s all hope nuance on the issue prevails so it doesn’t come to that.
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
If you liked this post from We're Not At the End, But You Can See It From Here, why not share? If you’re a first-time visitor, please consider subscribing!
I'm not sure men will go fight for women who spew anti-male nonsense. Also, the men on the left might have motivation for violence, but whether they have the capacity is another matter. All combat vets I know are on the right, for some reason.