Bloomberg offers a valuable, well-documented discussion of the key role that a number of YouTube "influencers" played in pushing young males towards Donald Trump in the last election:

EllenJS

It’s been months since I listened to the conversation with Reeves I linked to. I also, by chance, heard another, elsewhere, later. In neither case did I get a hint that it might make sense to think of him as this sentence from the ADL article suggests: “Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) are a part of the manosphere, a broad set of male supremacist, anti-feminist, misogynist and sometimes violent movements that exist largely online.”

@lucybeahere @wdlindsy @paco

William Lindsey :toad:

@mastodonmigration It's interesting, isn't it, that people tend to construe loss of privilege as deprivation instead of expanding possibilities for everyone. I think of how, growing up in the white South in the Civil Rights period, I saw many bitter white citizens ranting about loss of privilege when people of color gained long-denied rights, and their very ranting and bitter resistance harmed them as much as it tried to harm those obtaining rights at long last.

Mastodon Migration

@EllenJS @lucybeahere @wdlindsy @paco

Have no opinion. Just passing along different perspectives. Did not say he was an Men's Rights Activist. Said that the criticism of him is that he adopts a lot of their language and framing. There is a wide array of opinion on how to address this crisis and his prescription is not universally acknowledged. Others think a much harder line that doesn't acknowledge the persecuted male framing is a better way to go.

Mastodon Migration

@EllenJS @lucybeahere @wdlindsy @paco

To be clear MRA spans a wide array. The article describes the extreme, but something you read about is how the indoctrination into these beliefs is gradually and progressive. That is one reason some reject any prescription that plays into the idea of male victimhood.

It's a super complicated subject and very interesting to read some of the expert literature.

David Mitchell :CApride:

@wdlindsy

Yes, absolutely this … and not just in the US, young men in Canada are being caught up in this propaganda and being pushed hard to the right.

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@wdlindsy

It's not engines and tools in these videos it's fast cars and lots of casual sex that these guys are selling as the aspirational male ideal.

William Lindsey :toad:

@mastodonmigration Yes, I seem to recall having seen photos the beyond-odious Andrew Tate has posted of himself with fast cars, women he wants us to think he owns, cigars — all the shibboleths gathered together.

William Lindsey :toad:

@DavidM_yeg I think this is happening globally, perhaps — bitter, truculent, adamant resistance to attempts of women to obtain rights and autonomy at this point in history.