Leftist Men Are Pussies

+ a Very Online Dating Story, thought digest, 12.5.2024

Got you again with the clickbait! Although, I’ve never dated a leftist man. It’s anyone’s guess if the subject line is correct…

In this newsletter:

• Tumblr and politics

• A very online dating story

And beneath the cut:

• We don’t use the word radicalization correctly

• Reading the Arktos catalogue vs. learning from memes

• Post-pandemic right-wing converts

• Word salad about intellectual property

I Entered the Cultural Commentary Scene by Writing About Tumblr’s Outsized Influence on Media and Politics. The article was widely misunderstood. Probably, at least in part, because it was poorly written. But anyway, critics assumed I was arguing that Tumblr invented progressive identity politics, which is obviously absurd.

My actual point was much simpler, even banal: during the 2010s, people encountered identity politics primarily online rather than in college classrooms.

This was for several reasons:

• Media outlets scraped ideas from the internet while adapting to digital publishing demands

• Journalists spent significant time online and were often already embedded in these communities

• College students were increasingly immersed in social media

This observation was meant to directly challenge James Lindsay’s argument that college campuses were brainwashing American teenagers.

Tumblr hit at exactly the right moment—the early 2010s. Young people faced the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, crushing student debt, and a shit job market. Combined with smartphone adoption and online fandoms, it created the perfect conditions for Tumblr’s influence.

What made Tumblr special wasn’t the volume of users but the composition of those users: journalists, theater kids, fandoms, nerds, models, escorts, literary figures, and activists. Young journalists, writers, and academics formed their worldviews during these impressionable years. These weren’t random people. They were future cultural gatekeepers.

This coincided with the collapse of print media.

Legacy outlets hired young, underpaid journalists, many of whom were already steeped in Tumblr’s communities. The economics were brutal. Digital media needed cheap, viral content. Social justice topics were perfect: morally urgent, emotionally engaging, and endlessly debatable. Every article about privilege or problematic media generated both supportive shares and angry engagement.

Through interviews, I found that many Millennials’ first exposure to identity politics came through the Internet, not academic theorists. My peers didn’t read Foucault or whoever it was that Lindsay was blaming at the time. They were being told their faves were problematic and the evidence felt compelling.

Millennials then brought these ideas into their schools and workplaces. For example, someone might face criticism on Tumblr for using “hey guys” instead of “hey folks,” and then carry that linguistic policing offline. This behavior was amplified by mainstream media coverage and the anti-SJW anti-fandom.

My final—and most important—point was that this whole feedback loop had been carefully documented when it was happening by outlets like the New York Times.

More on this below the paywall cut.

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A Very Online Dating Story

by gabriela gorgas

We’d met on Bumble and been talking for a week or so.

I’ll call him Matt. What started as a conversation about our favorite horror movies quickly turned into paragraphs about anything and everything, from the two years I’d lived in Spain to the influence of horror writer Thomas Ligotti's work on season one of True Detective. After only texting for five days, we had a phone call.

It lasted for two hours.

I never intended for the conversation to get political so quickly; it happened when I mentioned that I listened to Red Scare, and he said that he’d heard of it but never listened. This made me excited, because it suggested we had even more in common than we’d thought.

He was conservative and I was liberal, but it didn’t bother me—I have conservative friends and family members, and I enjoy having thoughtful conversations with them (conversations in which we often find we have more in common than we think).

What differentiated him from the conservatives I knew, though, was just how fervent he was. Whatever he spoke about, it was with a zealousness, almost a rage, that I’d only encountered among fellow leftists. I sat quietly and listened as he ranted on and on about tech companies censoring rightwing viewpoints, about “fighting-age men with military-style haircuts” among Ukrainian refugees.

Sometimes he’d just talk and talk and I couldn’t even get a word in, almost as if he was monologuing to himself rather than having a conversation. But again, I liked him so far. And some of the things he said I never heard from the conservatives I knew. For example, he was broadly against immigration, even legal immigration. I instinctively disagreed with much of what he said, but was open-minded on principle. I myself had once been much more liberal than I was at that time, and had come to believe what once would’ve been unthinkable to me.

Shouldn’t I remain open-minded at all times, then, even when talking to him?

The only odd thing he said was when I asked what podcasts he listened to. He simply laughed and said we’d have to get to know each other a lot better first.

*

We met one evening at a small bar in Northside, a rapidly gentrifying Cincinnati neighborhood that was still uncomfortably between “coffee shops that only serve vegan pastries” and “don't go on that street after dark.” When I arrived, he was reading a book on the bar’s patio. He was tall, with buzzed hair and clear blue eyes, and he dressed simply but well—a long-sleeved, button-down shirt, dark-wash jeans, and polished dress shoes.

I remember my stomach dropping when I finally saw him in person. He was not as attractive as his photos.

Texting and then talking on the phone, I was very excited to meet him. Finding a guy like this in the artsy circles I traversed was hard. He read Baudrillard and Lovecraft and made music in his spare time, but he was also gentlemanly and masculine. He hit the gym religiously, ate red meat, and slonked eggs. After so many years dating wishy-washy, feminist men who didn’t walk me home or noncommittally referred to themselves as “queer,” Matt seemed like exactly the guy I wanted. It was because of this previous attraction that I decided I wouldn’t write him off just yet, even if the physical spark wasn’t immediately there like I had hoped.

We hugged and exchanged the usual questions (how are you, how was the drive, etc.) Then, I pulled a book out of my tote. It was Thomas Ligotti's short story collection Teatro Grottesco. Matt had a small book, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, in his own hands.

"Get it back to me whenever you want," he said as he handed it to me, smiling. "There's no rush."

We exchanged the books—the book trade had been his idea. We were both big readers. We went inside and got our drinks (him, a locally brewed IPA, me, a mojito). He paid. People filled the bar, and a comedy show was happening, so we returned to the patio, even though it was cold and wet outside.

The conversation started innocently enough. We discussed work, our favorite kinds of beer, and childhood trips to Half-Price Books. It wasn't long, though, before the conversation took a turn.

“So,” he said with an eager smirk, fingers laced and lying on his lap. “How’d you turn to the dark side?”

The question made me cringe a little.

He was so focused on criticizing left-wing identity politics that his own sense of self seemed defined by being against it, an anti-identity politics identity.

He spoke with a sense of importance I didn’t share. And really, what was so “dark” about being conservative, or just not a leftist?

I told him I'd been the stereotypical “social justice warrior” for most of my teen years, first baptized into wokeness through Tumblr. In college, I attended rallies to free Palestine and decorated my laptop with stickers from Planned Parenthood. But I’d always had doubts about certain things, doubts I’d been too scared to voice even to myself.

Was it really a good idea to abolish the police? Should we really believe all women? Anybody with common sense knows that being scared to voice doubts is a classic example of cult thinking. The leftist circles I was in were not actual cults, but they behaved like ones. Behaviors that would be red flags in any other group were excused because they were for the right cause. Social ostracization, intolerance of dissent or criticism, love bombing new members—all of it was fine if it was in the name of social justice.

Then, in 2020, I deleted almost all of my social media. This freed me to think critically without fear of being chastized for wrongthink (even if said chastizing was entirely in my head). Then I listened to Red Scare. I cringe at the fact that the Red Scare girls were part of what sparked my political shift, but it's true. They themselves have said that if they radicalize you, then you’re a moron.

The thing is that they didn’t radicalize me—at most, I’ve become left of center even as they’ve become right-wing. I would have experienced this change whether or not I started listening to them. But the point is that I felt a weight off my shoulders. Anna and Dasha said everything I wanted to say and then some.

I didn’t agree with everything they said, but after being so suffocated by the chronically online left, they were a breath of fresh air. Also, they were just funny. More than anything else, though, I suddenly felt different. While all my peers were posting black squares on Instagram and calling Trump a fascist, I was one of the few swimming against the current. I wasn't like the other girls. I was avant-garde.

Looking back on our date, I wasn't even attracted to Matt, as much as I enjoyed the illicit thrill of talking to him. Much like when I'd first put on Red Scare while going for my daily walk around the neighborhood, I felt like I'd tuned into something forbidden.

Matt and I agreed on many things. Biological males should not play women's sports. There's nothing wrong with a woman wanting to be a housewife instead of pursuing a high-powered career if that's what she wants. Maybe children don't need to learn what "bisexual" means before they've even started learning phonics.

The things he'd said previously did linger in the back of my mind, though. The way he'd avoided telling me what podcasts he listened to was still disconcerting, especially after I'd admitted to listening to Red Scare, which has featured guests like proponent of “human biodiversity,” Steve Sailer.

But I pushed them away because I was enjoying myself and wanted to reserve judgment. It must have been an hour in when the conversation took a turn.

“Can we get a little spicy?” He said, raising an eyebrow and leaning in.

We moved inside and huddled in a booth near the entrance when the comedy show was over. I giggled and shrugged.

“Okay,” I said.

“The Holocaust was totally overblown,” he said.

The statement took a moment to sink in. Once it did, I forced myself to keep smiling, for no other reason than to avoid making the situation more awkward than it already was.

I didn’t know what I thought he’d been going to say, but it wasn’t that. I nodded slowly and searched for a response, but nothing came to mind. I don't remember what I said after that. It must have been some variation of "tell me more" because he kept talking, even more excited than before.

I didn't listen, though. I was too busy wondering when I could excuse myself to go to the bathroom and call my friend to give me an out.

I smiled and nodded as he continued, somehow shifting from the Holocaust to why, "We can all agree it was a bad idea to bring a bunch of black people over here." I think I waited about five minutes before hurrying to the bathroom.

"Hey, I need you to call and ask me to take the dogs out," I whispered to my friend, unable to contain my horrified laughter, "This guy thinks the Holocaust wasn't real."

When I returned to the table, I was sure he knew what I'd been doing.

To his credit, he didn't call me out on it. I told him that my roommate needed me to let the dogs out and that I had called an Uber. Said Uber, however, was over twenty minutes away. So, in the remaining time, I was stuck with him, and I figured I could at least use the situation and try picking his brain.

"So I'm gonna be honest," I said, leaning in and batting my eyes, imagining myself as an intrepid reporter using her feminine wiles. "I don't agree with almost any of this. But I am interested, and I want to understand a bit better. Can you tell me what led you to this conclusion?"

So, he told me his story.

*

He'd started as a Bernie Bro. This made sense to me, as converts tend to be the most zealous.

He'd called himself a feminist and a socialist. The first time he'd questioned things was when, at a gay bar with his girlfriend at the time, someone approached him wearing a sticker that announced their pronouns as "they/them." He thought it was stupid.

From there, it was a slow but steady journey. He began reading, gasp, Jordan Peterson. From Peterson, he went to Camille Paglia, and from Paglia to Milo Yiannopoulos and Richard Spencer. He said one of the things that really changed his mind was seeing how conservative figures were being censored by large tech companies. When asked how he would describe himself politically, he said he identified most strongly with the "dissident right."

The term itself is vague.

Some say it's synonymous with the alt-right, while others argue it just encompasses various right-wing groups that do not fit into mainstream conservatism. However it may be defined, it accommodates everyone to the right of figures like Jordan Peterson or Camille Paglia. Some voices are more extreme than others, like Holocaust revisionists.

Some, usually leftists, would even categorize reactionary feminists or other TERF-adjacent thinkers as part of it. The point is that it’s more of a grab-bag of extremely online rightwing thought, rather than a coherent ideology. These varying titles and identities within the online right bring up another important aspect of his ideology, which is that it was just as obsessed with self-identification and grouping as the online left.

Interestingly, many of the right-wing thinkers he cited were from much earlier on, when the alt-right was only starting to gain traction on the Internet. Though he didn’t say, I suspect Matt’s transformation was a gradual process. I wonder how long it was before he truly made the switch, though if I had to guess, it was probably around 2016, when so much of this was at its peak thanks to the election.

According to data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, 12% of people who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primaries went on to vote for Trump in the general election. Again, though, this is all speculation on my part. He never told me when or how exactly he changed his politics. I just think it’s relevant to the story.

The conversation continued.

I smiled and nodded, occasionally pushing back or asking for further explanation. As he spoke, I glanced nervously around the bar, which was growing increasingly crowded. I was thankful it was so loud in there; god forbid, somebody overheard our conversation. I wasn’t scared, exactly, more embarrassed—while I reveled in my own controversial opinions from time to time, even “triggering the libs” occasionally, I didn’t want people thinking that I believed in what Matt was saying.

But still, I had to admit, I was fascinated.

Not because I agreed with him. But to meet someone who actually believed these things in the flesh felt a bit like encountering an animal once thought extinct or a new species of fern. Despite my fascination, though, a feeling of dirtiness and degeneracy permeated his every word. I knew I wouldn't be able to stomach this conversation for too long.

In contemporary leftism, the definition of racism has expanded to include things that are not, in fact, racist. But it's viscerally upsetting to encounter genuine racism. Not just coded language or sweeping generalizations with the caveat of "but some of them are fine," but actual explanations of why we should have all-white states or why the "Jewish individuals" played a much more significant role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade than they're given credit for (that's how you know somebody is antisemitic, by the way, if they say “the Jewish individuals”¹).

I asked him to explain more of his positions. What was his solution to the current state of the world? What policies would he introduce if he were in charge?

"I just think that culture should be maintained and kept separate," he said. "For example, Germany should be for the Germans, Spain should be for the Spanish."

Because my mother was from Spain, and I had lived there for two years, I was particularly interested in this last statement. I asked him what he meant because Spain is much more diverse than foreigners realize. There are three officially recognized languages in Spain besides Spanish: Basque, Catalan, and Galician. I explained that during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, these languages were banned at varying times to make Spanish the dominant language of Spain. This led to political strife and even violence that continues today. In the 1950s, a terrorist group called ETA emerged to create a separate Basque state. They committed bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings, causing the deaths of 859 people. Meanwhile, the movement for independence for the state of Catalonia still causes political unrest throughout the rest of Spain.

With this knowledge, I was skeptical of his argument.

I believe in preserving culture, not because mixing cultures is bad, but because it's good to maintain a connection to one's past and traditions. People of every nationality and ethnicity should be able to have that. That's why, just like I support the ability of Basque and Catalan speakers to use their native languages freely, I also support preserving endangered Indigenous languages.

However, interaction with others is also what creates culture. Many staples of "Spanish culture," such as the use of rice and saffron in cooking or the stunning architecture in the country's southern region, Andalucia, are because North African Muslims controlled much of the Iberian Peninsula, modern Spain and Portugal. Andalucia is actually derived from the Arab name given to the region—al-Andalus.

His response to my argument was that while there is undoubtedly much more diversity within some of these countries, Spanish people would still probably get along better with each other than they would with, say, Irish people.

"Or black people," he said in a low voice, leaning in and smirking.

By then, the disgust on my face must have been obvious. I leaned away from him slightly. What he said wasn’t just upsetting, it was obnoxious. I’d even go as far as to call it cringe. What was even more obnoxious was his self-satisfied smirk, as if we were in on the joke together. I glanced at my phone. My Uber was still about twelve minutes away.

I felt trapped. I didn't want to be a part of this conversation any longer.

Unfortunately, there wasn't anywhere I could go. The bar was somewhat isolated. There were houses around, but it was dark out, and the closest bar or restaurant would be at least ten minutes away. I didn't feel unsafe with him, mind you. He was just annoying.

*

"The way I see it," he said, undeterred by my discomfort. "It's kind of like a black bear and a polar bear. They're both bears. But should they be together? No."

"But what about countries like Venezuela or Brazil?" I said. "I have friends from there. They have incredibly rich cultures, and these come from the mixing of Europeans, Indigenous people, and Africans."

He just shook his head and shrugged.

"That's their problem," he said. "That's what I say. It's their issue; I don't want to deal with it."

The bar was now more crowded than ever. The mass of music and voices forced us to sit even closer, to lean in when we spoke. I hated it.

But the conversation continued. I don't remember much of it then, only that I was smiling, nodding, and checking how far my Uber was every other minute. When it finally arrived, I asked him to accompany me out. I'm not sure why, except that maybe I didn't want him to realize I was no longer into him, which was weird because I was also determined never to speak to him again.

"I had a great time!" I said quickly, giving him a limp hug before sliding into the car. "Thanks!"

We never spoke again, for which I was grateful. I deleted his number and unmatched him that night.

As I climbed into bed that night, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd deserved this. This was the thing that everyone on the left had warned me about, that Nazis were among us, that they were well-dressed and persuasive, and that simply questioning the liberal orthodoxy was the gateway drug to becoming a Nazi yourself. I wondered if I should stop listening to Red Scare. I wondered if I was a bad person. I wondered if I should abandon politics altogether.

But I wasn't convinced. I thought it might be more dangerous to shut out these views I disagreed with and trust people who said, "This person is bad, and their views are dangerous." And I'm still convinced of this now. In fact, I think seeing these ideologies uncensored, both by their opponents and by the people promoting them, can be useful. People may flirt with more “dangerous” ideologies, out of no desire more than just to be edgy or feel different. And while some may end up like Matt, others may just be turned off the whole thing and become, quote on quote, normies.

So, what made us go down these different paths? I want to say I'm more of a critical thinker than him, but I doubt that. I actually think intelligence has little to do with whether or not someone falls for these ideologies. Instead, it boils down to how we see this world. This guy liked believing he was part of a superior group and that isolationism and homogeneity were the keys to a peaceful and prosperous society.

More than anything else, he just liked feeling different. When leftism became the dominant cultural ideology, with companies releasing merch for Pride month and Joe Biden embracing identity politics as a campaign strategy, Matt no longer felt subversive. His ideas were no longer illicit, they were the norm. So he switched sides and got to feel special again. For me, though, those things weren't enough. I'm fortunate to have lived in other countries, visited even more, and interacted with people from various cultures, nationalities, and religions. Adopting his worldview would mean giving up on the joy of mingling with people different from me.

I think there's also the fact that when you realize so much of what you previously believed was wrong, it's easy to conclude that everything you were told must be a lie. I do understand how he came to this conclusion. In the contemporary left, you are not allowed to point out even the most basic of inconsistencies, like defunding the police will encourage violent and antisocial behavior, rather than curbing it. There is an unfortunate tendency on the left to take common-sense views and exaggerate them until they alienate most normal, not-chronically-online people.

I see how he must have felt when he realized that he had been lied to and finally let himself listen to his instinct instead of staying safely in the party line. But he fell into a trap that all of us are vulnerable to: the thrill of belonging, of abandoning one camp for another. Realizing that you were wrong is hard. For some people, it can be destabilizing, causing your entire sense of identity to crumble. I think a lot of the people who swing wildly from one end of the spectrum to another lack a certain integrity.

I don’t mean it in the sense that they’re bad people, more that they don’t know their own selves or their values. In the absence of a solid sense of self, ideology fills that void.

That's the other thing about the alt-right that I think people don't realize. Much of it is a reaction to woke identitarianism and utilizes the same tactics and arguments. Members of the alt-right also use identity politics²; they just identify with whiteness, European heritage, or Christianity rather than marginalized sexual or racial identities. Chronically online rightwingers will subject each other to just as many cancellations and harassment campaigns as those on the left (they just usually accuse each other of being secretly Jewish, or a fed, or an op instead of racist or an abuser, as seen with Lily Gaddis, AKA the TikTok N-Word Girl). The Great Replacement, a conspiracy theory created by French philosopher Renaud Camus, refers to Muslim immigrants as "colonizers" or "occupiers," and to Europeans as "natives."

If you follow the logic of the most radical critical race theorists on the left, you will often find yourself at the same conclusion as the alt-right: the races must be separated.

In a way, Matt didn't change his views much at all. He just switched them around a bit, but the framework was the same. I don’t regret flirting with the alt-right, literally and figuratively. In the end, I don't agree with these people, and I feel justified in saying so because I actually know what they're saying. I learned the danger of losing oneself in ideology, whatever it may be. The alt-right offers a tempting new identity for former leftists who’ve been disillusioned. I fear that even the “heterodox” movement is becoming its own identity. The fact is that wokeism may not be over, but I believe it’s on its way out. What comes next? I’m not sure.

One thing I do regret? I never got my copy of Teatro Grottesco back.

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