By Owen Strachan
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Various journalists have helped form a narrative of sorts
about the identity of this shadowy, boisterous alt-right movement. The
alt-right is childish and vicious, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing
other than the message-board histrionics of aggrieved young men in their
parents’ basement.
From what I can see, this narrative does apply to a
degree. Where various alt-right voices have articulated ethnocentrism, outright
racism, misogyny, decadence, and a kind of juvenile hatred, among other vile
stances, we should offer condemnation in no uncertain terms.
I do wonder, however, if the media has missed at least
one true thing regarding the “alt-right.” The movement (if we can call it that)
may often prove inchoate and even inarticulate, but behind the memes and coded
language, there seems to be a massed sentiment. It is this: men feel left
behind.
America is divided today on this matter and its import.
Many folks, particularly those of a more progressive bent, see men as whining
over lost cultural capital. Once, men had it good; now they’re forced to
compete in an even playing field, and they’re falling on their faces. Sorry for the stacked deck, guys—how does it
feel, losers?
Others see men struggling, observe them falling
precipitously behind in earning college degrees and other achievements such as
earnings for unmarrieds, watch them leaving their wives and children then
violently lashing out, and begin to wonder if men need something besides
elaborate gender theory or a dismissive long-form hot-take. Maybe men,
particularly young men, need help.
Men Are Moving
Into the Shadows
This second group does not wish to cut men a blank check
for their ill behavior. Actually, this group—a diverse and motley crew of
religious groups, libertarians, and people who care about the future of
civilization—wishes to hold men to a high standard. In other words, this is the
group that most wants to hold men to
account, that most takes their failings seriously. It is the group that
dismisses men’s concerns with gentle remonstrance, that accommodates men by
dumbing things down for them, that unwittingly ends up doing them terrific
harm.
Because it is not friendly to them, many men do not like
postmodern society. They have been taught they have no innate call to
leadership of home and church, and accordingly have lost the script for their
lives. They have been encouraged to step back from being a breadwinner, and do
not know what they are supposed to do with their lives.
They have been told that they talk too loudly and spread
their legs too wide, and thus do not fit in with a feminized society. They may
be the product of a divorced home, and may have grown up without an engaged
father, so possess both pent-up rage and a disappearing instinct. They did
nothing to choose their biological manliness, but are instructed to attend sensitivity
training by virtue of it. They recognize—rightly—that politically correct
culture constrains free thought and free speech, and so they opt out from it.
But here is where the common narrative of the alt-right
and related groups makes a major mistake. Men are disappearing, but they are
not vanishing. They are moving out of the mainstream, and into the shadows.
Many men do not want this. Many men do not want to fall
back. Many men want a challenge. They want to work. It is not in their nature
to sit back; men on average have 1,000 percent more testosterone than women.
Men know they are not superheroes, but they watch superhero movies because they
wish in the quietness of their own lives to be a hero to someone, even just one
wife and a few children. Men have a “glory hunger” that is unique and in many
cases undeniable. For the right cause, men are not only willing to sacrifice,
and even die, for the right cause they are glad
to die.
Now It’s Men We
Tell to Sit Down and Shut Up
But such discussion is not the lingua franca of our day. Young men have these desires coursing
through their blood, but very few outlets in normal American life help them to
understand such hard-wired drives. Those voices who do offer such a view face
tremendous pushback and retributive hostility.
As a result, many younger men today do not know how to
voice their instincts. This is at least partly why so many have adopted ironic
signifiers for their frustrated ambitions and impolitic views—frogs, memes, and
catchwords like “fail.” What young men cannot say in plain speech they say
through an ironic graphic.
It is easy, and right, to identify where aspects of the
alt-right are plainly misogynistic. But tying an entire people group to its
worst excesses allows for the full-scale dismissal of a diverse array of
concerns and experiences. This has happened with Donald Trump’s voters, for
example; according to many journalists, they’re all either racist or angry
about the loss of the halcyon days. The media executes the same lazy move with
the angry young men of the alt-right: they’re idiotic little boys. We have
nothing to hear from them, nothing to learn, nothing to consider.
This is a foolish instinct. But it is not only that: it
is a dangerous one. It leaves you susceptible to groundswells that sweep over a
culture seemingly without warning—the Tea Party, Brexit, Trump. Many folks on
the progressive side assume that because they have won the college campus and
now dominate the urban centers of power that the cultural game is over.
But what looks like a fortress-grade progressive order is
really an unstable element, as we have seen several times over. The ideological
insurgency will never have Ivy League degrees to award, coveted Beltway bylines
to dole out, or global-power conference invites to issue. But the insurgency is
finding its audience, and the audience is destabilizing and even remaking the
public-square, and all without central coordination or control of leading
cultural institutions.
You thought Bane was a movie character; turns out he’s a
political avatar.
This Is a
Troubling Development
I do not write this analysis as one who supports these
developments generally or the alt-right specifically. As with every shadow
venture of young and aimless men, they trouble me deeply. Where young men lurk
in corners and whisper in the dark, we should always be concerned, whether it’s
in your leafy suburban neighborhood or on a deep-web message-board.
We can debate the extent to which the perceptions of
angry young men are reality. What we cannot debate—if we care about them, that
is—is that many men are angry, flailing, and dangerously volatile today.
We will not find an easy solution to this troubled
situation. The public square is roiled and shows no signs of calming down soon.
True, restoring the family will greatly aid in the nurture and care of young
men. Sure, strengthening the economy and putting men to work will help. Yes,
tabling the speech codes and thought codes of the secular academy will bring
some men back to the table.
But men need a deeper solution than this. They need
something more than a message-board movement to join. They need a call to
maturity, to repentance, to greatness, to leadership, to courage, to
self-sacrifice on behalf of women and children. They need a hero: not a
political performance-artist, but a true hero, a savior who, unlike a fallen
culture, leaves no repentant man—or woman—behind.
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