The Manosphere fills a void created by neoliberalism which has been largely ignored by progressives

Over the weekend just gone I took some time to watch the latest Louis Theroux documentary – Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere – which relates how far we have gone in reverse with attitudes that men hold towards women. This blog post is not intended to be a review of that film but rather my thoughts on where it sits in the history of neoliberalism. The proposition is that neoliberalism creates voids where individuals are left behind and constructed as miserable failures. It also promotes an idea that an individual’s prosperity is a function of their own diligence and that the state fails to advance our well-being. Increasingly, these ideas are then embedded in misinformation and conspiracy theories and movements emerge to give voice to the anxieties that we face. The manosphere serves that purpose and allows young men to gain a sense of purpose and worth – notwithstanding that it is the world of scammers and oppressors. But it is another way in which neoliberalism is driving our societies into system-failure.

I admit that much of this segment of the Internet (the Manosphere) is somewhat unknown to me.

I avoid social media as best as I can and have very little daily interaction with it – I have never had a Facebook, Instagram, etc presence – mostly due to the way the developers (owners) of the various platforms behave in society.

I also hate the underlying programming that delivers the platforms – kludgy, bloated coding etc.

The film did direct my attention to this segment of the Internet, which I had really only thought about in relation to the growing neo-nazi, anti-vax, sovereign citizen movement(s) that have appeared – certainly in Australia.

That cohort regularly shows up with black balaclavas expressing anti-state views and propagating hatred for gays, Muslims, Jews, and other things.

The film reveals that are few men out there that are making a lot of money by duping other men into believing that their problems are that they have lost their position in the gender hierarchy.

As if there is a ‘natural’ hierarchy – which I took was one of the fundamental propositions that the key protagonists promote on their social media channels.

It is also about the raw attraction of being ‘self-made’ and having flash clothes, cars, lots of ‘babes’, and being seen as somehow being successful as men.

There were lots of things I wondered about while I watched it.

Louis Theroux, for example, appears to want to present an ‘intellectual’ treatment of the characters he manages to interview – a sort of rational perspective.

The problem is that there is very little rationality being exercised here – this cohort is beyond the standard constraints that regulate society.

The motivation of the key players was expressed as making as much money for themselves as fast as possible at whatever cost.

Most of us exercise self-restraint in our dealings with others because that is how social stability is ensured.

But this cohort cannot be appealed to in that way, which I thought was a weakness in the film.

I really couldn’t understand what Louis Theroux thought would be the outcome of his work in this regard, given that his vignettes, which featured several so-called ‘manfluencers’ just served to give them increased notoriety and, in the words of one of these characters – ‘content’.

Theroux himself became content and the protagonists were streaming him for cash before he even knew it.

Why would the documentary maker want to do that.

Further, towards the end of the movie, the mother of one of the protagonists is present for the filming and she makes the point that Theroux adopts a judgemental, superior sort of tone but in the end is trying to make money of the phenomena that he is sneering at.

That is a point worth considering.

How do we deal with these deeply offensive and destructive trends?

Do we expose them and given them publicity?

Or do we starve them of the attention they are seeking and thriving off?

Or some other path?

I also thought that the documentary didn’t really place the phenomenon being scrutinised within a broader historical perspective nor did it rehearse the social consequences of the growth in this sort of misogyny and ethnic hatred.

At the moment, the US President is, in his own words, having a bit of ‘fun’, murdering civilians, including bombing schools full of young children, because, again in his own words, ‘he can’.

I reflected back to his comments that became public in the lead up to the 2016 Presidential election when he said things like:

1. “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” (apparently said in 2005).

2. “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”

and so many more.

Trump also regularly tells us how rich he is or how successful in business he is – even if that might not be exactly true.

The characters in the film were Trump-like characters and they also expressed the view that they can do anything they like – especially to women – who were characterised as being compliant in one directional monogamous relationships.

That is, the women must be conventionally faithful while the bloke can wander afar.

The film didn’t really take the opportunity to explore how the women in the film or beyond felt independently of their muscle-bound, tattooed ‘men’ being present to coerce uniformity of view.

But the point is that the views expressed by the manosphere are the same as those expressed by characters like Trump, who thinks he can have Venezuela one day, Iran the next, then Greenland or Cuba – because he can, even if the Iranian folly is demonstrating that he really cannot have it in the way he naively believed.

The characters in the manosphere, similarly, tout their masculine ‘power’ and accomplishments, but when it comes down to it they are a combination of confidence trickster, thug, bully, narcissist, conspirator, who themselves have fallen for other tricksters promoting conspiracy theories.

However, the damage they do at the micro level is considerable and the film is largely silent on that.

The movie did show a gay hate crime, for example, but generally adopted a non-critical approach.

Women are routinely abused and demeaned in one way or another.

People who subscribe to their ‘make intergenerational wealth’ schemes mostly lose their savings but the ‘market’ only sees the Lambos and so the next generation of duped men don’t see the fraud.

There is also growing evidence from our educational systems that young boys who access this sort of viewpoint are rehearsing the same ideation with their classmates and rendering the classroom a theatre of oppression for young female classmates.

For example, this ABC article (July 13, 2025) – How the ‘manosphere’ is fuelling teen misogyny inside Australian schools – documents some of these cases.

And research by academics at Monash University is worth reading – We research online ‘misogynist radicalisation’. Here’s what parents of boys should know (published July 1, 2024).

This global research (published April 27, 2022) – Algorithms as a Weapon Against Women: How YouTube Lures Boys and Young Men into the ‘Manosphere’ – explains how “YouTube’s algorithms contribute to promoting misogynistic, anti-feminist and other extremist content to Australian boys and young men.”

Metaverse and other social platforms are also implicated obviously.

But it is when these views reach the political level, we get Trump and his gang of miscreants and then the consequences are massive for all of us, not just those who interact with the manosphere.

Where I place all this, and this is the point of the blog post today, is that neoliberalism has created a number of voids in society which are being ‘filled’ in various ways with highly destructive responses.

Early in the film, Louis Theroux interviews two young American men who are in awe of one of the rich men who run social platforms advocating intergenerational wealth.

The fellows think that they will ‘make it’ to if they follow the misogyny and lust for wealth.

It seems the reality has escaped them – one had no cash and was sleeping in his car – while he hoped he would make it rich.

Pure delusion.

But the void they were in has arisen because of the rise in precarious work and the insecurity that those labour market changes have brought to workers, particularly the younger workers who cycle through periods of homelessness, unemployment, low pay, drug exposure and more.

The promise of the manosphere is that the victims of this deliberate labour market reconfiguration by capital can step outside this corrupt system which had redistributed income to the top-end-of town and left the rest of us, in various states of being ‘behind’ and become powerful, rich and not have to answer to a boss.

The muscle-bound men, driving big expensive cars, with grand houses etc give the impression that rejecting the system is the way to go.

The manosphere gives voice to the anxiety those who are being left behind feel – it gives them (at least they think it does) a sense of meaning.

It fills the void created by neoliberalism.

And the state has not helped given that it has aided and abetted through changes to legislation and regulation many of the changes that have made it possible to execute the neoliberal agenda on behalf of capital.

So the anti-state rhetoric then generalises within these distinct anxiety segments into the anti-vax stuff, which allows characters like RJF Jnr to take power.

It generalises into hatred for Jews – who are cast (as they have been in history) as controlling the financial system.

It generalises into hatred for gays – who apparently spread disease etc.

Some years ago, on the same day I was giving a presentation to a progressive audience in Madrid, Spain, there was a massive street rally against unemployment in Southern Spain.

I asked the audience who they thought had organised this rally and the response was that it must have been the socialists.

The truth was it was the far right Vox movement who were trumpeting the concerns of the unemployed.

Vox adopt the ideology of nationalism, opposition to feminism and gender violence laws, strict immigration control, and traditional values”, and is gaining significant support from males aged 18-34.

This type of movement is giving ‘voice’ to the anxieties of a generation that neoliberalism is leaving behind and offering no alternative future.

This UK Guardian article (October 7, 2015) – In Spain, what once seemed impossible is now widespread: the young are turning to the far right – tells us that “Migration is barely mentioned – instead, failed policies on housing, wages and employment are driving young voters into the arms of Vox”.

The youth of the world, which was the hope for a progressive future, are instead becoming the front-line troops for a destructive dysphoria that intersects with the manosphere, because the progressive political forces have failed to voice their anxieties.

Instead, the progressive political forces have adopted neoliberalism and when they have been in power in recent decades have continued (and in some cases intensified) the oppressive neoliberal agendas.

It is one thing to intellectualise what the manosphere types call ‘woke’ perspectives, but another to actually do something in practice.

Progressive politicians are good at the intellectualisation part but do little in practice and are thus dismissed as ‘woke’.

Juxtapose that with the main players in the film, who are up and about, looking like they are successes, having everything that the system has denied to the young workers.

The other angle is that one of the hallmarks of the neoliberal ideology is that of ‘individualism’ – that were are all solely responsible for our own success and failure.

This emerged early on when unemployment started to rise in the mid-1970s after the poor policy response to the first OPEC oil shock.

To ensure the rising mass unemployment was seen as a political failure, the elites went into misinformation mode – that the unemployed were ‘work shy’ and lazy and preferred to live on government income support as a mendicant sort of life choice, bludging off the hard work of the rest of us.

We used to think of unemployment as a systemic failure to generate enough work.

But as the neoliberal era unfolded we were trained to think of unemployment as a personal failure – a moral deficiency among those without work.

So while the ‘left behind’ have experienced feelings of inadequacy, shame, and worthlessness, they are confronted with the proponents of the manosphere who tell them to take responsibility and act like men – exert power over women, beat up gays and Muslims etc

The manosphere tells them that their life is in their own hands – and reinforces the neoliberal message that has been dominant for years now and redirects this cohort into this destructive cult of hate and misogyny.

This article (April 25, 2025) from a PhD researcher in a British university captures this view:

Neoliberalism encourages us to see ourselves as isolated individuals, responsible for our own success or failure. Among many other things research has shown that one of its outcomes is a profound loneliness. This is something that the manosphere exploits.

The manosphere is in some ways are subset of the exploitative ‘wellness’ industry that is full of scammers promoting the ‘self-made success’ vision that appeals to those who neoliberalism has left behind.

You too can become a beautiful person if only you work at it (and pay some provider heaps of money).

The strategies of the manopshere and the wellness cranks are very similar and prey on those who have been rendered with little hope by the system.

Conclusion

The neoliberal voids are what progressives have to concentrate on and realise that mainstream economics has created dogma that has created and perpetuated these gaps in societal care.

Continuing to prattle out mainstream economic fictions – how will we pay for it etc – means that the state can never meaningfully fill these voids with progressive options for those under strain.

Neoliberalism-lite is neoliberalism.

That is enough for today!

(c) Copyright 2026 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.