Andrew Tate And the Crisis of Men in a Globalist America
“Bootstraps” Talk Won’t Cut It
Men are given an unfair shake in today’s society. Admissions to the top schools in America, once a right-of-passage for any young man hoping to make it big, are now increasingly and openly stacked against men, especially white men. The American dream of home ownership, lifelong marriage, and economic comfort is increasingly out of reach, as prices rise astronomically, the divorce court stacks against men, and illegal labor prices out American competition. Truck driving, honest work in a 90% male-dominated field, is set to become a thing of history as Silicon Valley “entrepreneurs” on H1-B visas carelessly develop technology for self-driving cars with little thought for the men they will impoverish. If they complain about a disordered economy, these men are accused of anything from xenophobia to indolence. The expected response for young men is that they incessantly apologize for any shortcomings, adapt to conditions not of their own making, and, at the same time, lament their own masculinity.
The rising popularity of the Muslim pornographer Andrew Tate doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Young men are idolizing Tate because, however cartoonish or immoral Tate’s version of masculinity is, at least he is unapologetic about his natural penchant for masculine aggression, and at least he doesn’t encourage his male followers to engage in feminist self-flagellation over their biology.
More specifically, Tate doesn’t tell young men that it’s all their fault. He doesn’t feed them “spiritual boomerism.”
Taking responsibility for your hardships, even the ones you’re not responsible for, is a masculine virtue no doubt. But that young men are struggling more and more to believe they ever will rise above such hardships no matter how much responsibility the assume doesn’t make this any less true. Conservatives, and especially Christians, will continue turning away young men into the arms of influencers like Tate if they don’t seriously consider the alienation these young men feel in the first place.
However immoral his stated opinions and actions are, however depressing and lonely his life appears to be, however vapid his version of masculinity is, conservatives can’t be all that incredulous at Tate’s popularity. Much of the right simply blames the frustration of young men on laziness. They minimize men’s suffering by seriously arguing that success in this economy is just a matter of pulling yourself up by the proverbial bootstraps. It’s the boomer-minded conservatives who welcome any amount of immigration from any number of disparate cultures no matter how many jobs they replace who are responsible for the alienation of young men. For them, the American dream is to lose out on high-skilled jobs with good salaries to an Indian immigrant who’s been here for 5 months but “did it legally.” The men who lose out are just collateral damage in establishing the multicultural society that, “the founders would have wanted.”
Besides battling record-high inflation and all the attendant economic hardships that come with it, young men are now competing with the entire world for the best jobs. It’s a playing field their parents and grandparents were never offered, yet one which that generation eggs on. It would take a saint to stay encouraged in such an environment.
Vivek Ramaswamy accused Americans of laziness for losing out in a battle against a flood of foreign labor willing to spend nights away from their families at the office for a modest salary in order to keep their visa. “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG,” Vivek wrote on X.
And as if to rub salt in the wound, Ramaswamy accused young men of appealing to the same unfair affirmative action type policies that placed these young men at a disadvantage in the American economy in the first place. For Ramaswamy, prioritizing the economic interests of American talent at the expense of foreign workers is “group quotas.” And rather than fix this alleged “mediocrity” by breaking down the affirmative action barriers in their own country and allowing disaffected young men a fair shot, mass importation of cheap labor into highly coveted jobs is necessary, they argue, in order to end “DEI.”
But conservatives keep missing the point. “Meritocracy” won’t end wokeness nor will it elevate talented young men. Chris Rufo expressed absolute incredulity that anyone would complain about the cost of living for young people just getting started. Rufo apparently forgot the massive cultural zeitgeist born of economic frustration that elected Trump, and the foreign labor that constantly poaches tech and blue-collar jobs. Rufo wrote, “the economy is strong, incomes have never been higher, trades are hiring apprentices straight out of high school, and tech has enabled a wave of entrepreneurship and high-income “email jobs” from anywhere on Earth.”
Therein lies the issue, the reason that young men find someone like Tate intriguing and inspiring. He doesn’t accuse them of gross self-pity for daring to have a problem with how their own country treats them. At the very least, he is less cruel than the conservatives who never had to face the hardships young me are facing today.
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