Boys

Yesterday's post discussed an article on "girls" in the May 2025 issue of First Things. I want to talk today about another article in the same issue by a different writer whose topic is young men.

The writer is Liel Leibovitz, and he opens his piece with the observation that online podcasters popular with young men seem to be giving a platform to some pretty unsavory characters: anti-semitic conspiracy theorists like Ian Carroll who claimed that the Jews were behind the 9/11 attack; Darryl Cooper, who insists that the real villain in WWII was Winston Churchill, not the Nazis; Candace Owens who maintains that Judaism is a pedophilic religion; and misogynistic Hamas sympathisers like Andrew Tate.

He adds that, "Other examples of morally repugnant attention-seekers being feted on our best-lit public platforms abound. Which means, alas, that we have a very big problem on our hands."

He goes on:

To hear some of our more astute public intellectuals tell the story, the problem is the rise of anti-Semitism on the right, the equally frightening doppelganger of the anti-Jewish hate we’ve seen erupting this past year on progressive college campuses nationwide. The theory goes that, just like the woke left, the woke right sees the Jews as a uniquely malevolent and all-powerful force that must be crushed if we’re to make America virtuous again.

This explanation is partly right but mostly wrong. Tate, Carroll, Cooper, Owens, and their ilk may dislike Jews, but anti-Semitism isn’t the real issue. Nor, for that matter, is their deep distaste for America. Instead, what we’re looking at here is a rapidly escalating spiritual crisis.

Liebovitz's analysis seems right to me. The young men who tune in to listen to these characters and much more mainstream and salutary figures like Jordan Peterson, are searching for something to fill a void in their lives of which they may be only dimly aware but which gnaws at them nonetheless.

It’s no coincidence, then, that Tate and the others appeal mostly to men. As my Protestant rabbi Aaron Renn correctly observed, men have been abandoned by our culture. In liberal circles, they’re accused of toxic masculinity and told to check their innate privilege. In traditional spaces, they’re found guilty of being insufficiently devoted to their families and faith.

Nowhere do they receive much empathy or permission to engage in uniquely masculine virtues, which means they’re likely to fall for the first jaunty figure offering them a joyous vision of manhood, no matter how warped or depraved.

We've heard from radical feminists that women need men like fish need bicycles. We've been told by our progressive elites that men, particularly white men, are a pox upon the earth.

Young men used to be able to find meaning in occupations that only men could do, but there are very few such pursuits left to them today. Little wonder that boys, in search of an affirmation of their masculinity, turn to people like Tate who models a perverse version of it. Little wonder that they accept anti-Semitic canards that make them feel superior to another group. Little wonder that they often become violent.

Liebovitz has more in his column (subscription only), but he finishes with this:

We don’t want kids to take relationship advice from Andrew Tate and history lessons from Darryl Cooper. To prevent that from happening, we need to offer better alternatives.

Yes, we must insist that they take responsibility for their lives and do so in ways that honor their faith traditions and prioritize communal well-being over facile individual gratification. But we must also show them enormous love, show that we care about their very real predicaments, and that we have communal and spiritual resources to offer rather than empty pep talks about bootstraps and hustle.

Politics is aesthetics practiced by other means, which means that we shouldn’t be afraid to challenge the loathsome loudmouths in their own game. For every braying Tate advocating violence against women, let there be a steelier man roaring about respect. For every Carroll distorting history, let there be someone speaking the truth with as much confidence and more verve.

Put simply, then, the general idea is this: Everything is downstream of culture, and the kids who tire of the left’s insufferable preachiness and reflexive defeatism are going to look for more exciting heroes.

Unless we give them a King David for our time, they’ll turn to Conan the Barbarian. We need to get into the game. It is up to us believers to teach the pagans once again that faith triumphs in the end.

Indeed, that's a mission that the Church would do well to commit itself to with more discernment, zeal, and cultural sophistication than it often displays.