Republicans have a woman problem. This is not new news, but exit polling from this year’s elections showed the grim reality. Eighty-two percent of women in New York ages 18-29 voted for socialist Mayor-elect Zohran Mandami. In her landslide loss, Virginia’s GOP gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears lost 11% of women’s votes in the same demographic who voted for Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) just four years ago.
Campaign consultants will blame it all on abortion, but what are we conservatives messaging to women and about women? The conservative and MAGA movements are busy arguing about commentator Tucker Carlson’s interview of a race-baiting, misogynistic, antisemitic Joseph Stalin lover and Adolf Hitler admirer, trying to figure out how to bring Nick Fuentes’s followers into the fold. The thinking is we need to understand these young men and what they are going through because, after all, “they are with us on some issues.”
But consider some of Fuentes’s own words. “Hitler was a pedophile and sort of a pagan. Well, he was also really f***ing cool,” Fuentes has said. He also believes the Jews “are responsible for every war in world.”
Right-leaning Americans have already figured out these comments, and those making them have nothing to do with MAGA or conservatives. However, Fuentes is attempting to become more mainstream: He has millions of followers who are drawn to his outrageous, frat-boy pabulum and woe-is-me screeds. These young men find each other online and stoke each other’s anger, fear, and hatred.
Fuentes also directs much of his anger and hatred toward women. He is part of the manosphere, a type of social media influencer who promotes masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism. They believe society is biased against men, and particularly white men, because of the feminist movement.
Many of these men’s rights activists call themselves “incels,” involuntary celibates, because they can’t get a date. They are not saving themselves for marriage or refraining from sex for any moral purpose but as a protest against women whom they hold responsible for all the ills of society. They blame women for divorce, for making false accusations of sexual violence against men, and for damaging men socially and economically.
“They act coy, but most women want to be raped,” Fuentes says. “They want me to beat the s*** out of them.”
Another member of the manosphere who has found a platform from Carlson is Andrew Tate, an accused human trafficker, accused rapist, and known woman-hater who is under investigation in both Romania and the United Kingdom.
A multitude of victims, one a 15-year-old, have come forward to accuse Tate and his brother, Tristan, of forcing them to perform sex acts on camera and selling the videos. Charges against Andrew Tate include: Trafficking minors, producing pornography with minors, money laundering, intimidating witnesses, rape, and sexual battery.
In sickening text messages to a former girlfriend, the internationally known kickboxer told her that he wanted to “beat the f**k out of you” and boasted that she “deserves it.” There was “no point in having you” if he didn’t “beat and impregnate you.” He added, “I love raping you.”
Like Fuentes, Tate blames the feminist movement for all the ills men now experience, dehumanizing and demeaning women in grotesque and unspeakable ways. The feminist and ‘Me Too’ movements have indeed damaged a generation of young men and women and torn the family apart. But telling young men that raping women and forcing them into submission to settle the score is the answer? That has no place among conservatives.
Host of the NextUP podcast, Mark Halperin, last week read a tweet from a father of an adolescent son explaining how boys could become Fuentes followers. They are told their whole lives that they need to repress their natural masculine behavior and succumb to the LGBT agenda and feminization of the culture. Writer and social commentator Rod Dreher came face-to-face with this reality, claiming that 30 to 40% of young conservatives are part of Fuentes’s “groyper” movement.
Former ESPN journalist and Fearless podcast host Jason Whitlock, who has a yearly event to reinforce manly values in Christian men, has blamed the church and its leaders for allowing this “feminist spirit” to take control of society. “Christian men have been so feminized that young people won’t listen to us,” Whitlock said.
In a ranting podcast earlier this year, Whitlock excused Tate’s behavior, saying, “He was just slick-talking some whores.” He then went on to say, “Andrew Tate is necessary. We’re in a larger war … and we need him on the battlefield.”
Is this war against women?
The late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, wise beyond his years, knew this manosphere world. In fact, he could easily have chosen to become one of this group of miscreants. Instead, he made the brilliant and courageous decision to embrace his Christian faith, get married, and have children. He encouraged other young men to do the same: “Get married and have more children than you can afford,” he famously said.
NICK FUENTES IS A PORTENT OF WHERE CONSERVATISM IS HEADING
Kirk refused to debate Fuentes, not willing to give him any platform. Kirk was growing his own army for the “war” by speaking the truth in love. American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp, after kicking Fuentes out of the biggest conservative gathering, the Conservative Political Action Conference, said Fuentes is an “instigator who just wants attention.”
Calling him “a creep,” President Donald Trump kicked deceased human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein out of his club, realizing he did not want to be associated with this vile individual. MAGA conservatives should do the same with creeps such as Fuentes and Tate.
Diana L. Banister is a political and communications strategist, former Trump administration official, and executive consultant with Sovereign Global Solutions.
