The March 14 issue of New York magazine featured an article with the catchy title, “Tate-Pilled: What a generation of boys have found in Andrew Tate’s extreme male gospel.” For anyone who enjoys the theater of forbidden, poke-the-woke content, much of the article is wildly entertaining. For example, describing Tate’s online fans, the author writes:
But they stayed for the ostentatious, outrageous masculine display: the machetes and cigars, the diamond watches, the Bugattis and Lamborghinis, the obscene piles of banded cash like a scene out of Scarface.
This is genuinely funny. The nerve of this man, not only to be a man but an exaggerated caricature of a man. Moreover, and unlike, say, Howard Stern back when he was funny, Tate can presumably back up his hyper-male braggadocio, given that he twice became kickboxing champion of the world.
It should surprise no one that Andrew Tate has attracted millions of young male fans. He is the antidote to the politically correct, vapid absurdities they are force fed by every institution in the Western world. A generation of American men are being systematically marginalized, demoralized, demotivated, abused and destroyed. The Tate phenomenon is an extreme reaction to an extreme problem.
In America today, if someone is a white, straight, biological male who “identifies as male,” he is condemned for his ethnicity, his masculinity, his “othering” cisgender normality, his heteronormativity, and for all of these undesirable “oppressor” traits, his privilege. If he’s not white but possesses any of these other so-called toxic traits, he is still a candidate to get on board the Tate train, where he will be welcome.
All of this vitriol directed at “heteronormative cisgender males” is concocted, hostile garbage. It is a lucrative, divisive hustle, peddled by mediocrities, adopted as the new marketing gospel by corporations, and pushed by politicians, the media, and every educational instructor and bureaucrat from kindergarten through graduate school. Anyone who speaks out against it is stigmatized as a Nazi, at the same time as anyone who falls for this garbage is indoctrinated to believe any sort of violence is justified, up to and including murder, if their motivation is to eliminate Nazis.
The point here isn’t to litigate the accusations that have been leveled at Tate and his associates, or to suggest everything he’s done is exemplary. The point is that when young men are disparaged and discriminated against merely because they’re biological men who identify as men, or because they’re white, or heterosexual, or, for that matter, Christian, and when young men are made to think that these qualities—which are objectively not bad, if not actually healthy and good —are things to be scorned and ashamed of, the monologues and admonitions of Andrew Tate begin to make a lot of sense by comparison.
What doesn’t make sense, to put it mildly, is today’s establishment understanding of race and gender. It is a narrative promoting a worldview that is almost a complete inversion of reality. For at least the last 50 years in America, the “lived experience” of white men has been exactly the opposite of what we’re told. They’re not privileged oppressors. As a matter of fact, they’re the targets of blatant discrimination. Thanks to affirmative action, institutionalized in academic admissions and scholarships, faculty appointments, hiring and promotions in corporations and government agencies, marketing campaigns, entertainment awards, SBA loans, and government contracts, white men are sent to the back of the line. The results are unequivocal.
Today, when adjusting for hours worked, consecutive years worked, and the market value of specific educational achievements (for example, “Dr.” Jill Biden does not possess credentials as marketable as someone with a doctorate in organic chemistry), men now make less than women in the United States workforce. You wouldn’t know that to hear the lies, repeated incessantly, that women only make 77 cents for every dollar that men make.
In recent years, male participation in higher education has crashed. In 2021-2022, women accounted for nearly 60 percent of all college students. And while men still outnumber women in technical fields, the woke brigades in recent years are determined to end this obvious evidence of male privilege. Never mind that a man is twice as likely as a woman to get a perfect score on the SAT math test or that, on average, men choose STEM fields more than women.
Choices don’t matter. Merit doesn’t matter.
Everyone Is a Target of Woke Nihilism
When merit doesn’t matter, it is no longer something for which to strive. This harms everyone, not just white males. America’s youth, regardless of sex or ethnicity, are all victims of the woke narrative. The alleged oppressors feel guilt and endure discrimination, the alleged oppressed feel resentment and are taught to perceive discrimination. And all of them, an entire generation, are being destroyed by what is the central plank of woke ideology—hopelessness.
This hopelessness is evident in the irrational sensationalizing of everything negative in America, almost always with complete disregard for the actual evidence. Police are committing “genocide” against blacks. There is “war on women.” There is an “epidemic” of school shootings. The American nation is inherently racist and sexist, and American history is a blood-soaked abomination. Fascists are on the verge of overthrowing the government. The climate crisis is upon us and the planet is going to become uninhabitable within a decade or two, and we’re all going to die.
This unrelenting narrative of doom and hopelessness is exacerbated by an assortment of imposed lifestyle changes that would destroy a generation of youth even in an otherwise healthy, hope-oriented culture. Many boys today are forced to take prescription tranquilizers if they display spirited behavior that used to indicate someone who would grow up to become a fine and courageous man. They fall prey to the seductive lure of enervating online games, or are pigeonholed into participating in hyper-supervised group activities. They are denied the unstructured time that delivered adversity and uncertainty, conditions that in earlier generations helped turn children into resilient and adaptable adults.
There’s much more. There is the normalization of marijuana, which for millions of young Americans has lowered their IQs and destroyed whatever motivation and drive they might still possess. There is the shameful decline in the quality of public education. There are nearly two decades of ubiquitous, addictive smartphones and social media, with all the damage they do to the metabolism, mental health, and intellectual agility of young people. And as if all that is not enough, we have the ridiculous, disgusting imposition of complicated, half-baked gender ideology, robbing children of the innocent clarity they need in their early developmental years.
It is a small wonder that America’s youth are adrift. Every institution in America has succumbed to compassion run amok, perhaps willfully unaware that effective compassion comes with obligations, and healthy societies must embrace hard but simple truths. Competition builds courage and character. Punishment deters crime. Demanding tolerance for everything breeds intolerance. Enforcing immutable standards is the only equitable way to offer equal opportunity. When collecting benefits is easier than working, people will quit working. It is impossible for all identifiable groups to attain equal outcomes in all things. Every individual endures challenges, anxiety, insecurity, disadvantages, crushing disappointments, and capricious good fortune, regardless of their origins.
And, of course, this brutal truth: we need dangerous good men to protect everyone from dangerous bad men.
Which brings us back to Andrew Tate. In a world where young men are told from the day they were born they are toxic, racist, sexist oppressors, and the only acceptable path for them is to embark on a lifetime of apologizing and going to the back of the line, they will rebel. Becoming a fan of Andrew Tate may be a controversial choice, but it’s a predictable reaction to an unhealthy and hostile society.
Rejecting the narrative of doom, division, hedonism, perversion, resentment, intolerance, cowardice and utter madness that defines far too much of American culture today does not, however, require young men, or anyone else for that matter, to go to Andrew Tate’s extremes. America is blessed with tens of thousands of rebel influencers offering messages of sanity and hope—Jordan Peterson, Heather MacDonald, Chris Rufo, Candace Owens, Vivek Ramaswamy, Michael Shellenberger, and the redoubtable Thomas Sowell, to name just a few.
“One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do,” wrote C. S. Lewis in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, “is to shut their eyes to facts.” Embrace hard but simple truths, reject the lies, and make some noise. If the world is going mad, don’t accept it. Take away the accouterments of madness, one by one. Save your child, save yourself, save America.