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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Last week, Luke Pollard, the UK Labour MP for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport, yet again called for a "national incel strategy". According to him, it's vital that we do this to prevent another "incel terror attack" like the Keyham shootings.

I think the first time I actually heard the word was around the time Todd Phillips' Joker had released. What I don't understand is this extreme alarmism of progressives surrounding incels, when they say the exact opposite of Islamist terrorism. An internet subculture of terminally online, socially disabled men who find themselves unable to order a Big Mac without feeling butterflies in their stomachs are such a big threat to our society that we need a national strategy to combat them? This to me seems like it's completely tarred by alarmism surrounding white supremacy and racial animosity. Granted, incels do hold on to ethno-supremacist views, such fringe ideologies always find purchase among those on... the fringes of society, often young, single men with no social life and no job/ a dead end job and having nothing to lose. They spew all the vitriol online because they tend to be non-confrontational in real life, they might claim to support violence but almost never have the stomach to commit violence themselves. They've locked themselves inside their heads, no one's allowed inside and they view the world, society and women through a tiny keyhole into the sewer that is the most toxic spaces on the internet. They aren't hurting anyone but themselves. But why are the "basement dwelling gamur incels" among the most reviled subgroups in the culture war? Is it simply because they spew the most bile against every 'vulnerable' demographic (women, minorities, LGBTs) online?

Zoom out a little. The problem isn't with dudes not getting laid per se. It's a problem of managing unmarried young men. This is a problem societies everywhere in the world have always faced forever. In fact, human society has spent millenia designing and improving a roadmap specifically for how boys ought to navigate - military service, occupational development, expectations in (usually but not always) monogamous marriages.

Over the past 20 years (with antecedents out to 50) western societies have systematically destroyed all of these institutions for young men and offered no replacements. Say what you will about "traditional" male roles (and there are good reasons to want to change those notions) ... but an absence of roles and demonstrated paths to responsibility / status in society is absolutely catastrophic. This is for one simple reason; most of society's violence is perpetrated by young men. Murder, rape, assault, robbery ... 90% - 95% of all perpetrators are men between 18 and 35 (maybe extend that to 40, whatever).

"Incel" is just a part of the elephant that seems to be fun to grope recently (yes, I wrote that on purpose). The bigger issue is what to do with all these young men. But the climate is such that, right now, any political / social leader who stands up as says "Let's talk about the plight of young men" is ridiculed into oblivion.

Well, okay, we can continue to do that and continue to watch young dispossessed men murder random people on Twitch (literally that happened in the Buffalo shootings).

But the climate is such that, right now, any political / social leader who stands up as says "Let's talk about the plight of young men" is ridiculed into oblivion.

With the notable exception of Jordan Peterson.

"Let's talk about the plight of young men" is ridiculed into oblivion.

To be fair to the MP, he's going in that direction. A Prevent-style strategy is largely focused on identifying groups at risk of radicalisation and trying to work with them to put them on a better path.

Whether he will have any success in promoting such an idea is dubious, exactly because of the ridicule. Young Muslims are "justifiably aggrieved". Young sexless men? "Privileged."