This is Part 6 of the short series of briefing notes that arose out of…
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 there are a 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 off 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 give 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’ too 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 has redistributed income to the top-end-of town and the left the rest of us in various states of being ‘behind’, to 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 we 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 not 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 a 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.
It’s compelling to view the Manosphere as more than just an online subculture, but as a reflection of the pressures and isolation that neoliberal systems can create. The challenge seems to be finding ways to provide young men with purpose and community without exposing them to the harmful elements these spaces often harbor. Thinking about these gaps might help us understand broader systemic failures in society.
Almost all so-called “progressive” politicians are neoliberals wrapped in rainbow flags.
They look down on the working class and are largely responsible for the growth of fascism.
Perhaps young men would do well to spend a month or two in a true wilderness to see first hand how far you get as an individual without a society. No one to provide a single thing for them, no one to help when you’re sick or injured.
Dunning-krueger effect springs to mind whenever I encounter a male “individualist” absorbed into the manosphere. Lack of real life experience is as much to blame as lack of knowledge though. Not at all entirely their own fault.
I think taken to extremes neoliberalism will eventually take us full circle back to an understanding of the value of society, along the lines of what my parents and even more so my grandparents understood.
You don’t need a hierarchy, you don’t need a religion or a formal ideology, you just need a baked in understanding of the value to the individual of a having place in a cooperative society.
I wish I was as optimistic of the future as Jane Christensen.
I think neo-liberalism will be around until the end of the human race.
There’s just no way the wealthiest of society and the sycophants working for them are going to allow any cooperative or inclusive society than benefits others to exist.
Sadly, I have to agree with Alan here.
Neoliberalist capitalism is embedding itself as TINA – the Thatcherite 1980s dogma of ‘There is no such thing as society” as unchallengeable ‘human nature’, very much as 19thC Social Darwinist dogma did with that small dominantly white male elite, a servile managerial class, and 80-85% as the untermensch – an inferior class. It led directly to Nazism and is again.
That steep pyramidal and rigidly hierarchical socio-economic structure is basically neo-feudal, oligarchical and very much established within corporate capitalism. The ‘might is right’ of contemporary militarism only reinforces that rigidity.
The recent Israeli law imposing mandatory death sentences, but only on non-Jews, goes well beyond apartheid and is wholly fascistic.
I’ll go further. The definition of totalitarianism, as described by Hannah Arendt, is that you are compelled to think and act within an elite framed reference. Man exists only as a highly competitive individual, markets are necessarily an unregulated jungle, devil take the hindmost. The strongest will win and impose their will.
Unemployment, and consequent fear of destitution, is the ultimate tool of choice in enforcing compliance, and subservience.. Such economic policy is our strait jacket.
This is the very same mindset as the ‘manosphere’ – and echoes the unregulated robber baron system of the late 19thC in the USA where exclusive individual property rights were/are the ultimate ‘human rights’ and the elite imposed their will in pitched battles, like Carnegie at Homestead, Rockefeller at the Ludlow Massacre.
Those barons battled against any human unity through association and unions. You are on your own.
130 yrs later the current gig economy does exactly the same thing – and some 40% of Americans live within this sector, and there are estimates of up to 5m UK workers.
By this logic neoliberalism is a totalitarian dogma.
Sorry, Jane, but Gramsci got hegemony spot on.
My experience is that Monty Python and the Life of Brian is the most accurate portrayal of progressivism. Judith interrupting their meeting to shout, “Reg! Something is actually happening!” kinda sums it up. The bigger point, though, is that this isn’t limited to progressive politicians: it’s also true of people who are more tangentially related to politics, like activists, organizers, and volunteers.
The book Rules for Radicals is really sobering. Alinsky points out that bourgeois culture actively fosters class awareness, that they do in fact have to work together to keep the proletariat under the boot. On the other hand, proletarians have to be convinced that there’s something in it for them personally to get them motivated to do anything. He wasn’t writing about today, either. He was talking about the 60s and 70s.
That said, everyone always believes that the current institutional landscape is unchanging. This is obviously an ahistorical view: empires that seemed eternal do collapse under their own contradictions. Of course, the belief in the immortality of empires is really the belief in the immortality of emperors, which emperors have every reason to promulgate. The problem for us is that the collapse of an empire hurts everyone; indulging in the post-imperial agrarian fantasy would also be a terrible mistake.
But then, here I go, intellectualizing…
Younger generation crave security – why they would benefit from JG.
“Political scientist Jean-Yves Camus dismissed the stereotype of young people altruistically voting for green or left-wing parties as misguided and outdated.[288] Living as young adults in what they perceive as a volatile world, they crave security.[289] Compared to older cohorts, young voters of the 2020s have grown up with dimmer economic prospects and as such are more likely to think of life as a zero-sum competition for scarce resources and opportunities.[”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Z
“Significant numbers of Gen-Z men support traditional gender roles,[314] believe that it is much harder to be a man today,[313] and that women’s emancipation has gone too far and has come at their expense.[309] This political sex gap has been noticeable since the 2000s, but has widened since the mid-2010s. This growing difference has also been observed among young adults in China and South Korea.[292] Across the Western world, young men’s socioeconomic status has been on the decline relative to young women’s,[300] something certain online influencers such as Andrew Tate exploit in order to cultivate in their followers a zero-sum mindset and a deep resentment for women.[313]”
One of the drivers of the manosphere especially the online ‘influencers’ is that they are acutely aware that the current economic system is stacked against them (a reasonable deduction).
Distribution of wealth and salary disparities reflect, and are integral to this perception.
What distinguishes this group is that they then conclude that the only way to offset this is to go harder, go further to the right, look for scapegoats (ie women), and become the sole-centre of their own world, absolute narcissists.
‘Revealing The Wage Gap Makes Far-Right Voters Much More Supportive Of Redistribution’ (Oct 8th, 2025) is an article by Christopher Hoy, London School of Economics and Political Science: International Inequalities Institute.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2025/10/08/far-right-voters-and-support-for-redistribution/
Hoy notes that
“Drawing on surveys across six high-income countries, we find that most people dramatically underestimate wage inequality – such as the pay gap between CEOs and the average full-time worker – and most would prefer much lower levels of inequality than they believe exists.
When we presented respondents with accurate information about wage inequality, this led those on the far right to become much more supportive of redistribution, narrowing a lot of the gap with voters on the left.”
One of the articles major conclusions is that “that government intervention is necessary.”
And therein lies a formidable hurdle: persuading politicians to nibble at the incomes of those who are basically their peers, and who many choose to emulate post political career (thanks to the Revolving Doors; eg https://michaelwest.com.au/revolving-doors/ ) is most unlikely, until public pressure becomes, if it ever does, unrelenting.
If you could bring someone from the distant past into the present in order to show them how the psychopaths and their sycophantic associates are ruling the world to their own ecologically-destructive advantage, they’d say (technological changes aside), “What’s new?”
Psychopaths have been ruling the world since the advent of agriculture (post-hunter-gatherer societies) 11,000 years ago. Whereas H-G societies were oikonomic and the full range of physiological and psychological needs of their members were met (as best they could given ecological whims which almost certainly motivated humans to develop agriculture), post-H-G societies have been one example of institutionalised chrematistics after another. In my opinion, the current era of neoliberalism (mid-1970s onwards) is just Neoliberalism 2.0. Neoliberalism 1.0 was practiced during the period between the introduction of the Enclosure Laws and the immediate post-WW2 quasi-oikonomic era.
The prevailing form of institutionalised chrematistics depends on technological changes and concessions made by the ruling elite to appease the plebs enough to maintain stability and therefore maintain their power and wealth. 5,000 years ago, the ruling elite first did away with wholesale slavery (an extreme form of tyranny) and introduced modern money and taxation (a less extreme form of tyranny, but tyranny all the same). It reduced the likelihood of insurrection (increased stability of the system) and, by freeing up abled people that previously managed the enslaved population, it increased the productive capacity and military strength of society. Societies which opted not to introduce modern money and taxation were subsumed by those that did. Many had no choice but to introduce modern money and taxation to avoid takeover. Modern money and taxation spread. The real resources obtained by currency-issuers were still predominantly used to benefit them, but some would have been used to establish the infrastructure for society to function, of which the plebs would have benefited from.
Once modern money and taxation was established, the emergence of markets was a matter of when, not if. At some point, currency-issuers spent more of the currency into existence (financial injection) than they destroyed with taxation (financial leakage). The difference between G and T (G – T) accumulated in the hands of the plebs. We call it ‘savings’ (S), a new financial leakage. Hence, S = G – T. Nothing’s changed.
Once some plebs had S, it was a matter of time before some of the remaining plebs acquired the currency to extinguish their tax liabilities by offering to work or by selling something useful to the plebs that had S. Hey, presto – markets!
New ways to engage in chrematistic activities emerged. New ways for the ruling elite to gain at the expense of plebs were institutionalised. Failure to make sufficient concessions at various stages and the inevitable collapse of chrematistic systems led to changes in empires and changes in the way societies were organised (revolutions), always to the advantage of the existing or new ruling elite.
Every new concession made by the ruling elite increases the possibility of wealth and power being equitably shared amongst society’s members and for society to operate on ecologically sustainable principles. With concessions made that would have never been envisaged (e.g., parliamentary democracy and the right of everyone to vote – as flawed as all democracies are; government provision of basic public goods; freedom to organise (labour unions); and political parties representing the plebs), WW1-Great Depression-WW2 provided the space for a quasi-oikonomic system to flourish. It lasted for about thirty years. It was still flawed – it was based on growth for growth’s sake powered by fossil fuels – instead of on growth to a sufficient scale and the transition to renewables (i.e., a transition to an ecologically sustainable post-industrial society) and got caught out by the oil price shocks of 1973 and 1979. The chrematistic elements of the system were exposed and it opened the door for Neoliberalism 2.0.
And here we are in 2026 pretty much where we were in 1926 except with 8.25 billion people, a sick planet, human demands on the Earth 80% greater than what the Earth can sustainably supply, and some psychopaths with a finger close to a button that could blow up the planet.
I don’t know and I don’t think anyone else knows how to get out of this situation without a disaster to destroy the power and wealth of the elite and to erase their legitimacy. It’s what ended Neoliberalism 1.0, but who wants disaster? You could also start afresh in 1945. I’m not sure that we’ll be able to start afresh with a bountiful planet when Neoliberalism 2.0 inevitably comes to end.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Read Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier, it’s what we are driving ourselves back to, today, but just a prettier version.
The wheel is turning and we are going back to visit our past future.
Phil, I don’t know how to get out of this situation but am increasingly convinced that it won’t be by the oxymoronic ‘electoral democracy’. What we need is sortition – but how to get here?
David
David Joy: The problem is that the ruling psychopaths control everything, to some degree, including the means to control things. They don’t simply reconfigure the system to suit their chrematistic ends, they block any reform of the political system that confers them their power.
Our political systems/institutions were never designed to share power equally. They were created as a concession by the ruling aristocracy to the emerging bourgeoise. The aristocracy got the Upper House and retained many of their privileges and the bourgeoise got the Lower House to introduce legislation to legally reconfigure the system to suit their chrematistic endeavours at the proles’ expense. A new group of chrematists had emerged. Law enforcement officers enforced the changes. In France, the aristocracy refused to provide the concessions that the emerging bourgeoise demanded and lost their heads.
In Australia, almost everyone is a chrematist of sorts. If you have money compulsorily going into a superannuation fund then, unless you have chosen the ‘cash’ option, your money will be purchasing a range of speculative assets and commodities that drives up asset and commodity prices at the expense of vulnerable people. Since many of these assets exist in the form of property, an increase in their price comes at your own expense if you are young and seeking to purchase a home.
I sometimes think that superannuation – an institutionalised chrematistic rort – was introduced to justify the explicit and more excessive chrematistic behaviour of established chrematists. A case of “don’t complain about our chrematistic behaviour now that you are a chrematist!” Basically, another concession made by the ruling psychopaths. The problem is that unlike oikonomia, which involves positive sum exchanges, chrematistics is a zero-sum game. We can’t all be chrematists, so the more of us that are, the more the rest suffer, and the greater is inequality in our society. Future generations will suffer even more.
I like the idea of sortition, but it has its problems too. People chosen to sit on a panel to make a decision on an important issue have to be well informed. That requires having so-called ‘experts’ present information to the panel. But who is an ‘expert’? If the decision requires some knowledge of economics, will the panel be informed by a mainstream economist because they dominate the profession? Whoever gets to choose the presenting experts will have enormous power.
I believe that academia has existed to intellectually support the ruling psychopaths, especially in the social sciences. The physical sciences are a bit different in that is more difficult than the social sciences to maintain a false claim. That’s not much of a problem for the chrematists because new knowledge (technology) is often of great value to them, unless it inconveniently exposes the flaws of a chrematistic system (e.g., climate change science). They then selectively reject the science, often calling upon social scientists with little scientific knowledge to provide support. The greatest criticism of the Club of Rome’s “Limits to Growth” report in 1972 came from mainstream economists who claimed that markets (price signals) would always induce the development of a new ‘substitute’ resource to perpetuate the growth process. If mainstream economists were correct, the global Ecological Footprint, which was below global Biocapacity in 1972 (i.e., ecologically sustainable), would still be below global Biocapacity. It is now 80% larger (i.e., ecologically unsustainable), which indicates that new technology has merely allowed humans to gnaw away at more of the limited stock of natural capital to fuel the growth in GDP. No pushing back of ecological limits and no refutation of the Limits to Growth report at all.
Should power ever be taken away from the ruling psychopaths (by design or disaster), the ability to establish an oikonomic system that is sustainable, equitable, and would allow everyone to receive what is necessary to live a meaningful, purposeful, and joyous life is undermined by the ‘mythical’ knowledge that a society would inherit from a collapsed chrematistic system.
I can’t speak for Bill Mitchell, but I’d be surprised if he doesn’t have the occasional person telling him that he should be more engaged in the political process because what he does isn’t having much impact at present. That might be true, but I have no doubt that if there is any hope in a post-chrematistic world, then what Bill and others like him are doing now will have its greatest impact in terms of providing the ‘genuine’ knowledge required to create a truly oikonomic world.