I wrote about Tate last week a criminal sex-trafficker and alleged good friend of … Barron Trump? I guess it does figure
I posted this a year and a half ago, pointing out that Donald Trump was consorting with some truly vile, fringe figures, among them Paul Ingrassia, now working for the White House:
Amanda Marcotte has written a fascinating deep dive report on online radicalization for Salon that I highly recommend. I’ll just excerpt this piece of it:
The same rabbit-hole phenomenon that can draw social media users deeper into the world of eating disorders or suicidal ideation also appears to be a factor in online radicalization. Lisa Sugiura notes that many of the men she interviewed while researching the “incel” community were first drawn into that world through unrelated or apolitical online material, before the algorithm turned their heads toward darker stuff. One interviewee, she said, had done a “simple Google search” about male pattern baldness and eventually ended up on “incel forums, which were heavily dissecting and debating whether being bald is an incel trait.”
That man became an incel “very much through the algorithm,” Sugiura said, and through online conversations with people who “showed him a different way to view the world.”
“Pathologies like eating disorders and suicidality exist on a continuum with radicalization,” said Brian Hughes, the American University scholar. “In a lot of cases, they’re co-morbid. Depression and radicalization are commonly seen together.” Just as online merchants hawking dangerous diet products exploit young women’s insecurities, he added, the world of far-right influencers displays “an obsession with an idealized masculine physique, which often leads to steroid abuse.”
The most famous example of that phenomenon is Andrew Tate, a British influencer currently being held by Romanian authorities on charges of rape and human trafficking. Tate’s alleged victims say he choked them until they passed out, beat them with a belt and threatened them with a gun. A former kickboxer, Tate has made a fortune by showing off his muscular physique and expensive toys, gizmos and gear to attract a massive online following of young men, promising that he can turn them into “alpha males.” Tate has become so popular with boys and young men in the English-speaking world that educators are organizing and sharing resources in an effort to combat his influence.
“There’s been a huge increase in rape jokes that the boys are making,” a seventh-grade teacher in Hawaii told Education Week.
“Pathologies like eating disorders and suicidality exist on a continuum with radicalization,” said Brian Hughes of American University. “Depression and radicalization are commonly seen together.”
Conspiracy theories and right-wing propaganda often hook people, as Tate does, by appealing to anxiety and insecurity, especially regarding hot-button issues like race, gender and status. In his legal brief in the case of Steven Carrillo, Hughes explained that the murderer “was gratified by the feelings of anger and indignation” from far-right videos he saw on Facebook and “was rewarded with more extreme, more angering content.” (Carrillo pleaded guilty to murder and eight other felony charges last year, and is serving a life sentence without parole.)
There are some possible solutions and she goes into them. It’s going to be a challenge but it’s not impossible.
If you think this stuff is just a fringe concern, here’s Paul Ingrassia, a Claremont fellow and Trump insider:
It’s not surprising that incel fringers would have been hanging out with Trump down at Mar-a-Lago. It was a daily freak show. But I confess that I didn’t think they’d actually put a BFF of Andre Tate at the Department of Justice. My bad. Of course they would.