Why Men My Age Truly Become Radical

It’s much deeper than Reddit & memes—for many men, it's the fight of their lives.

A couple of days ago, I published a guest post from author/up-and-coming poet Jessica Wills about the link between online communities that form around a shared distrust of modernity and the increasing radicalization of young men. It’s an interesting piece, you should read it, and I think Jessica correctly identifies part of this phenomenon in a very specific framework—there are religious young men who develop sympathies for the alt-right because of nostalgia for an imagined past that’s fostered by an online community. Yet I don’t think that this is the whole story, and after a horde of angry emails and calls (some of you people called me over this), I want to present my perspective on this, as it’s one of the issues that I care about the most and that I’ve encountered the most in my life.

A couple of disclosures here: I’m not Catholic (all of you should know this by now), I definitely fall into the category of terminally online, and I have precisely zero sympathies towards actual members of the alt-right. However, I think we need to have a more down-to-earth discussion in figuring out what actually radicalizes young men. It’s not really the memes, the online communities, or the theo-bro-ish sentiments. In examining the data, it turns out it’s a lot deeper than that.

There’s no question that people do encounter heavily ideological content online. It’s in the nature of the algorithm: the material that gets clicks generally does so as a result of increased user engagement, and it turns out political content tends to perform well by those metrics. This can be more-or-less mainstream content like Ben Shapiro or legitimately extremist content like Andrew Tate (I’m linking to this although it physically pains me to see the writer acting like Shapiro and Tate are at similar levels). Some of those people are men—the ‘manosphere’ is a real phenomenon that many young men interact with, and not always in the healthiest ways. Within the ‘manosphere’ exists the sub-phenomenon of incel behavior—one that’s been discussed ad nauseum by political commentators.

Data time. While studies seem to indicate that online incel activity is tied to events in real life and that such online activity is on the rise, it’s unclear how much the online activity in turn drives real action. Within such online communities, there exists a separate language system, often based around a hyper-sexualized view of social hierarchies, and focused on the rejection of the celibate lifestyle. One particular analysis asserts that incel culture rallies itself around five core doctrines: “the sexual market, women as naturally evil, legitimizing masculinity, male oppression, and violence.” On the issue of violence, the data do not show a majority of ‘incels’ supporting violence, except for those who self-describe as misogynists. From a 2021 study published in the Journal of Strategic Security:

“Although the majority of incels are non-violent and do not approve of violence, those who consider themselves to be staunch misogynists are likely to endorse a desire to commit violence and are also likely to become more misogynistic through participation on incel web forums, which validate their views.”

So what does this have to do with religion? Where’s the devastating piece of data that establishes a link between tradcaths/orthobros and political extremism/violence? Well, that’s just the problem—these are nebulous links. Becoming engrossed in online communities, or obsessed with theological debates, isn’t always a healthy thing, and in fact, can be heavily damaging to young men. Misogyny is a real problem, and attending a conservative Christian college has given me anecdotes as to how there can be an overlap between an obsession over traditionalist (or hardcore complementarian) theology and damaging views on gender in society.

However, that does not make things like memes and online communities pipelines to the alt-right (and using terms like “based” and “red pill” are not necessarily indicators of anything nefarious). Absent data, these points are nonsequiturs. There is, however, one dominant factor in why young men become radicalized/misogynist/violent.

Themselves.

At the end of the day, the choice to espouse radical views is just that—a choice. Young men, even troubled and mentally ill ones, cannot truly succeed without a sense of moral agency—no amount of Andrew Tate videos can strip a man of his responsibility to not emulate the worst excesses of the culture around him. And striving for things like faith, family, friends, and work is hardly incentivized by popular culture. The Acton Institute’s Dr. Anthony Bradley describes the struggling modern male in this way in his recent book on American fraternities:

“He evaluates himself according to the way he hope others see and accept him. No amount of achievements are enough for him. He always needs more. A man like this is deathly afraid of having limitations, being seen as incompetent, losing his social status, not being adored, and being humiliated. This kind of man is often misconstrued as someone  who is “Type A,” driven, an alpha male, but his character could very well have roots in an emotionally unstable place.” (Heroic Fraternities, pg. 81)

Young men in America are struggling in a whole host of ways, and fighting against online radicalization can be one of those ways. Yet, let’s not fool ourselves about what’s the real path out of such struggles. It’s not about limiting our meme intake or avoiding terms like ‘based,’ or anything like that. These things are bandaids for bullet wounds.

The path out of such struggles is accepting the unfairness of life while embracing the transcendent, daily call to fight temptations and live for others. Fighting radical temptations requires radical determination and a radical belief that young men actually can and want to succeed. There’s no room for finger-pointing—for millions of my fellow men, this is the fight of our lives, and the least that people can do is stand by us in the fight, believe that we can be better, and hold us to that. That’s more than effective—it’s the tough but real love that young men are so desperate for more.