In one of my favourite books, Bronze Age Mindset, Bronze Age Pervert talks about the absurd notion of a “swole left.”
In case you don’t know—and I’m sure you probably don’t—the “swole left” was a meme the MSM conjured up back in 2016 or 2017. It lasted all of about five minutes. Basically, the meme went like this: male leftists are starting to work out so they can get big, feel good and, of course, “bash the fash.”
The swole left are coming to reclaim the gym in the name of puberty blockers for all and tampons in every boys’ bathroom!
Absurd, right?
HuffPo or some other rag interviewed this chunky ginger kid whose claim to fame was being able to squat a lot more than he could deadlift—a sure giveaway he was performing his squats to about a quarter full depth—and he spun a yarn about how his newfound beef and bacne had helped him dispense with some neo-Nazis on a train who were harrassing a random brown person.
And that was that. The meme largely disappeared without a trace; although there was an attempt to revive it last year or the year before I think.
Emasculation is now more or less baked in to being a male leftist; it’s an essential ingredient of the cake. The “swole left” meme was a rare attempt to do something about that, a recognition that ceding the ground of physicality to your political enemies in a struggle that could go kinetic at any moment—well, that’s pretty dumb, isn’t it?
Wouldn’t have helped Uncle Joe much in the summer of 1941 if the flower of Soviet manhood had been noodle-armed Redditors, would it?
But the cry of “swole left!” was a cry in the wilderness. The emasculation trend has only deepened. It reached its apogee—or nadir—at the Democrat National Convention last year, when male conventiongoers were offered free vasectomies in a mobile clinic outside the hall, courtesy of Planned Parenthood. Inside the hall, commentators like Dana Bash and politicians said male testosterone decline is essential to the ongoing march of Progress, because it makes men more likely to vote for a woman president—and especially a woman of colour.
Bronze Age Pervert’s gloss on the sad failure of the “swole left” meme is this: The modern left is so wedded to deviation from nature, to physical dependency and a kind of yeast-like existence, that any leftist who picks up a dumbbell and sticks with it will quickly discover they’re no longer a leftist at all. The values and virtues inherent in the process of physical cultivation—regard for beauty and the laws of nature, personal responsibility, individual striving, grit and determination—are simply inimical to modern leftism.
I agree. The idea of a “swole left” is a contradiction in terms.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the relationship between political allegiance and physicality, especially testosterone levels, a lot recently, because I’ve been writing a new book. It’s called The Last Men: Liberalism and the Death of Masculinity, and it picks up where the Tucker Carlson documentary The End of Men, which I starred in alongside RFK Jr., left off. It’s a full hormonal theory of modern politics, and it asks some pretty searching questions, not least of all whether liberalism is, by its very nature, a low-testosterone political system. Even if we could solve the terrible problems of ill health and exposure to toxic endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and restore our testosterone levels to where they should be, would liberalism offer satisfying outlets for all that newly released masculine energy? The book will be out in late spring, from Passage Press.
Another thing that’s had me thinking along these lines has been Mark Zuckerberg’s transformation from space alien to sunkissed beach bum brodude.
The metamorphosis has been ongoing, over a period of at least a couple of years, but in recent weeks, since Trump’s victory, it’s been hard to ignore its political effects, as the Facebook founder has actively courted the president-elect, visiting him multiple times at Mar-a-Lago; reversed his company Meta’s DEI programs and stopped stocking tampons in male bathrooms; made it possible to say “faggot” on Facebook again (at last!); appointed Dana White to the board of Meta; and made a guest appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast in which he waxed lyrical about the benefits of martial arts, and blew the lid on the government-backed censorship regime that operated on his platforms during the pandemic.
In his Rogan appearance, Zuckerberg said that doing MMA had “turned on a part of [his] brain” that made him appreciate the need for “masculine energy.” “You want masculine and feminine energy,” he said. “But corporate culture has swung towards being a neutered thing.”
It could well be that all of the changes we’re seeing to Mark Zuckerberg himself and to his platforms are simply a result of his taking up MMA.
I mean, something similar has happened to Jeff Bezos, who appears to have hopped on the sauce when he was epically mogged by Leonardo DiCaprio in front of his soon-to-be wife Lauren Sanchez at some red-carpet party a few years ago—maybe it was the Oscars. Bezos got stacked, and then he refused to let The Washington Post endorse Kamala Harris. He’s said some very warm things about Trump since 5 November, and donated a million dollars to the inauguration fund. Oh yeah, and Melania Trump has just signed a $40 million contract with Amazon studios for a documentary series, which is about as close to a direct $40 million donation to the Trumps as you could get without actually making one. Cause and effect?
Maybe we really are seeing a convergence of billionaires all thanks to the benefits of sun and steel and TRT.
An alternative, perhaps slightly more realistic, explanation would be that Zuckerberg simply knows which way the wind is blowing, and so do Bezos and all the other big business leaders who’ve been visiting Trump at Mar-a-Lago and making friendly noises. They know that 2024 isn’t like 2016. The American people are, for the most part, sick and tired of diversity and equity and anti-white racism. They’re sick of the decline of competency. They’re sick of crime and all the other fruits of unrestricted mass immigration. They’re sick of being told what to do and what to think.
These captains of industry are bending the knee, as it were, because they know it’s what they have to do to survive in America now.
Zuckerberg, Bezos and others are likely to have known what was coming well before election day, courtesy of the vast amounts of user data they have access to via Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, all of which would have allowed them to predict the result far more accurately than any New York Times poll. When Bezos refused to let The Washington Post endorse Kamala, he was giving the game away—even if the pollsters were saying the complete opposite.
Frankly, I don’t think it really matters why: an epiphany at the gym or cynical self-preservation—or even a mix of both. What really matters is that these people fall into line with the will of the American people. There’s a massive preference cascade taking place—a sudden change in people’s beliefs and choices on a societal level—and powerful men like Zuckerberg, Bezos and Musk have an important role to play in that, in fostering it and creating the conditions for its fullest expression. If they’re willing, let them.
That isn’t to say we should trust Zuckerberg. We shouldn’t. I don’t and never will. My Instagram account was nuked, without warning, the day The End of Men was released, in October 2022. Before that, it had a special warning attached to it telling would-be subscribers that I was a purveyor of dangerous “misinformation” about the COVID-19 vaccines. I wore that as a badge of honour. I’m back on Instagram now.
Many had far worse to deal with. We shouldn’t forget what Zuckerberg and Bezos and all the others have been part of. How they skewed politics to the left when it suited them and made life harder, even impossible, for people like us.
I know that if Kamala Harris had won, Mark Zuckerberg would be rolling out the red carpet for her and preparing Facebook and Instagram for the incoming Tausendjähriges Kamala brat Reich. So would Jeff Bezos. But they’re not. Trump won and instead they’re talking about the benefits of masculinity, competition and freedom of speech. I’m happy to call that a win right now.