When Twitter removed verified status from some controversial conservative accounts in November, alt-right provocateur Laura Loomer was undeterred. “I could be sad about this and let it ruin my night, or I could view it as a compliment,” Loomer tweeted. “I’ll take this as a sign that I’m really effective at countering the left. At the end of the day, it’s all about your mindset and perspective. @Cernovich has helped me understand that.”
Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) calls himself “America’s leading mindset expert.” He’s gained fame by promoting right-wing crusades online, including the demented Pizzagate conspiracy theory, and by being surprisingly plugged in to Trump’s Washington, obtaining the sexual harassment settlement documents that caused Rep. John Conyers to resign. But before he got into politics, Cernovich wrote Gorilla Mindset: How to Control Your Thoughts and Emotions, Improve Your Health and Fitness, Make More Money and Live Life on Your Terms—the unofficial self-help book of the alt-right.
One might call Cernovich’s approach the power of positive thinking. Eliminate negative self-talk to improve your inner monologue. Pick a personal affirmation or mantra (suggestions include “I am unstoppable” and “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like victory”). Frame your problems as opportunities or challenges to be met. Use mindfulness techniques to stay present and check into your body and thoughts. Envision a personal “moment of triumph,” and then “feel this energy and become one with it.”
These are not revolutionary ideas, even if Cernovich treats them as such. (The two sources of authority that he cites most often are Tony Robbins and Wikipedia.) He also offers diet and exercise advice, including plugs for various nutritional supplements, like N-Acetylcysteine, which he says helped him “conquer depression”; after the book came out, Cernovich joined Alex Jones in the nootropics industry by selling a pill called Gorilla Mind.
The title Gorilla Mindset is a bit of a misnomer, as there’s no discussion of primate psychology or releasing your inner ape. The gorilla branding is rather to entice young male readers. “No other ‘self-help’ book has been targeted towards men like you,” Cernovich writes. “The message is always watered down to appeal to a wide audience”—and by “wide,” we can read “female.” Cernovich’s project is to repackage generally applicable self-help tenets to an audience of insecure men, even though, aside from a few references to increasing testosterone, his advice has no actual gendered valence.
Cernovich is a big believer in self-promotion. The epigraph for the first chapter is a quote attributed to himself, and he quotes a fan saying that his podcast “will alter your consciousness into an alpha male godlike realm where anything is possible.” He tells his readers to “record everything you do,” making YouTube videos of their work lives to monetize their skills via SEO—in other words, to become mini-Cernoviches.
The book is self-published, and it shows—Cernovich’s mindset is not that of a copy editor. One section heading reads “Us [sic] Mindfulness to Improve Your Reading Comprehension and Focus.” Although Cernovich refers to parts of the book as “worksheets,” there’s only one line of blank space to pencil in responses to prompts like “Think back to a time when you felt on top of the world. Write out this experience in as much detail as you can”; I assume including more space would have increased per-unit printing costs for the 177-page tome. On the book’s second page, below the header “What Others Are Saying About Mike Cernovich’s Mindset Techniques,” is text that appears in identical form on the back cover.
The young white men who are drawn to the alt-right won’t find anything truly dangerous or revolutionary in Gorilla Mindset (assuming that the nootropic supplements don’t fry their brains). Just about everyone could benefit from less negative self-talk—and maybe diminished self-hatred would decrease the allure of seeking meaning via ethno-nationalism?
What links Cernovich’s amalgam of self-help bromides to our current political moment is its de facto selfishness. “You need time to work on yourself,” he writes. “You don’t have time to allow others to impose their demands and ego upon you. For the next four weeks, say no to everything someone asks you to do.” He also advises that “when you develop ruthless focus, you may learn that many of your friends and family members aren’t friends at all. They are people who use you for their own ends and become deeply offended when you start living your life.” This is Ayn Rand’s vision of the good life, looking out for number one camouflaged as an ethical principle.
I was surprised to learn that this is not Cernovich’s first book—he wrote three previous short guides to juicing, back when he was billing himself as a mere “lifelong martial artist and fitness enthusiast who used juicing to help him boost his energy, improve his skin, and help power through and recover from rigorous workouts.” In the career advice section, Cernovich mentions the “halo effect”: “When you establish yourself as a trusted authority in any area, people will believe you have the answers to other problems.” Cernovich is correct—he’s risen from juice enthusiast to self-help guru to alt-right leader. With the power of a gorilla mindset, where will he go next?
Aryeh Cohen-Wade hosts the podcast Culturally Determined on Bloggingheads.tv.
