Misogynistic influencers are dabbling in antisemitism. In a sense, it’s more of the same
by ImagineAI
Contributing Columnist Emily Tamkin August 23, 2023
Myron Gaines, co-host of the Fresh & Fit podcast (the “number one men’s podcast in the world,” according to itself), recently announced that his show had been demonetized on YouTube.
According to Gaines, Fresh & Fit, which has 1.4 million subscribers on the platform, was “kicked off the YouTube partner program.” This program, among other things, lets members make money from their audience.
YouTube does not offer explanations of why certain content is demonetized. Gaines suggested that Fresh & Fit was penalized for their topics of conversation. “That’s unfortunately the risk you take when you make the kind of content that we do,” he said.
The Fresh & Fit podcast, which began in 2020, is part of the “manosphere,” a constellation of online personalities who push out extremist, retrograde gender politics. Recently, Fresh & Fit has also been dabbling in antisemitism.
Media Matters’ Justin Horowitz, who reported on this embrace of antisemitism by many in the manosphere, has theorized that these podcasters and influencers are pushing out antisemitism because extremism is popular. It is on the rise globally, including in the United States, sometimes with deadly consequences.
But there is another element at play, too. Offering listeners and viewers of the manosphere a dose of antisemitism offers them the same thing as misogyny does: an easy explanation. It might not be true, but it is simple and comforting. In a sense, the impulse behind misogyny and antisemitism, and their appeal, are the same.
Dabbling with neo-Nazis
In July, Fresh & Fit, hosted by two men of color, brought on white supremacist Nick Fuentes multiple times. On July 7, Gaines praised Adolf Hitler, and bragged about having the courage to discuss “JQ,” or “the Jewish Question.”
It isn’t only Fresh & Fit. A manosphere influencer who goes by the name of Sneako, who has 1.4 million Instagram followers, has described Jews as having “ultimate control and power and they will abuse it if they need to protect their agenda.” An antifeminist influencer by the name of Hannah Pearl Davis (1.75 million followers on YouTube) published — and soon deleted — a song called, “Why can’t we talk about the Jews?” The diddy included the lyric, “Why can’t we talk about the — without being kicked off of YouTube.” She dedicated the song to Fuentes.
Nick Fuentes still has a huge audience, despite having been kicked off of YouTube and other mainstream social media sites. To get some of that audience, why not offer what Fuentes is offering?
Easy explanations
The stars of the manosphere acknowledge that men are hurting, or struggling, or not living the lives they want. “For all my young boys out there,” Gaines said in a video posted a year ago, “what you guys want to do is just focus on becoming better, getting in the gym, exercising … having productive habits.”
Many boys and men clearly are suffering: They are lonelier than ever. A 2021 study found that, while men are diagnosed with depression less often than women, they take their own lives at a higher rate.
But rather than encourage men to be more vulnerable with those close to them, or express their feelings, or reach out for help, the men of the manosphere offer a simple solution: Blame feminism. Blame women.
As the writer Matthew Neale put it earlier this year, “Part of what can make” men’s rights activists’ “narratives so appealing is that they acknowledge the rates of depression, suicide and incarceration in men — figures which are real and terrifying — but then weave a fictitious global conspiracy around them.” That women have rejected men must be because we have moved away from how things are meant to be, or because the women are on social media, or because, historically, “all women are whores.”
What else does this remind us of?
Antisemitism, too, provides an easy out. Those who believe that a shadowy, shady Jewish force is behind everything wrong don’t have to accept the reality that life is confusing and uncertain and at times unjust. When Fuentes and Sneako go on Fresh & Fit and say that Jews are responsible for transgender identities, as indeed they did, they are offering an explanation. It’s not true, but it does offer a simpler way of seeing and making sense of the world.
To put it another way: It’s hard to unpack and examine the body of literature on why boys are dropping out of college at higher rates. It’s hard to tackle socioeconomic inequality, the kind that makes it more difficult for everyone, regardless of gender, to live a stable life. It’s easy to blame the Jews for all the world’s ills.
Casting blame doesn’t actually fix anything, of course. But that was never the point. The point is to sell a simple explanation and justify continued inaction, and rage, on the part of the listener.
There is another quality, too, that sexism and antisemitism have in common: They offer the possibility of seeing some people as inherently — and immutably — inferior to others.
In this worldview, women and men just are a certain way. Men deserve one thing, women deserve another. Men should lead, women should follow. Men belong in certain spaces, women belong in others. But why?
That’s just how it is. It is the equivalent of a parent telling a child, “Because I said so,” or offering a story unglued from reality. Except that the thing being explained is not why bedtime is a certain hour, but the hierarchy of people and oppression.
That’s just the way it is
It is thus unsurprising that, for example, a self-proclaimed woman-hater would post that Jewish people do not have the DNA “to produce Chad’s and extremely good looking people.” This is stated as scientific fact. Jews, in this mindset, look one way and reproduce one way, and that is simply how it is. This, too, is easier. One does not need to recognize women or Jews as individuals. They just are a certain way.
Often, a person who suffers some consequence after saying hideous things about Jewish people then holds said consequence up as proof that people are simply not allowed to talk about Jews, but we can guess that that’s what will happen next. It would, after all, be a simple explanation.
To contact the author, email [email protected].
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