The manosphere — a perverse space where wealth and abusive male dominance are worshipped

The BBC reported this week, “Controversial influencer Andrew Tate has won an appeal in a Romanian court as he seeks the return of assets which have been seized by authorities.” His followers on social media have celebrated this as a victory for the man.

There is something perverse about the blind adoration of wealthy people, especially men, merely because they have a lot of money and/or are successful businesspeople.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are prime examples of men who are adored for their business acumen and wealth. To these two we may add Andrew Tate — though by no means as wealthy as Musk or Trump — who may be the cynosure of the toxic male, who believes that material wealth and public status are what matter for successful manhood and life in general.

We can probably add, with necessary caveats and qualifications, figures such as Jordan Peterson and Jeffrey Epstein. Peterson has been described as a “custodian of the patriarchy”. Epstein needs no introduction and words sometimes fail to describe him fully.

Anyway, let’s focus on the trio of Trump, Musk and Tate, who are, like Peterson, quite central to a veritable “manosphere” which uses anti-feminism to frame feminist movements as the main causes of “men’s issues” and “male suffering,” thereby turning feminism into villains and men into victims. 

The manosphere is a community group of loosely affiliated and incorporated websites and social media communities that explicitly promote and protect men’s perspectives, gripes, needs, frustrations and desires.

To be clear, I am not discussing wealth or money; the queue of people who do not want an increase in income is indeed very short. I am discussing blind adoration and ideological solidarity, with wealthy men regarded as deserving of praise, adoration and support because they have a lot of money, never mind their behaviour and especially their misogyny.

Adoration of Maga

Wealth and masculinity are the bookends of power in the manosphere

“Now, what most men do is they avoid physical confrontation because they’re cowards and they start doing fiscal confrontation. This is why so many men are obsessed with money, because it’s a degree of conquest. We can no longer walk the earth and conquer land, right? So now we conquer the land financially.” 

“Musk is far from self-made. He was born in South Africa to an extremely wealthy white family that profited off the exploitation of workers in sub-Saharan Africa and apartheid-era South Africa. Much of his family’s wealth came from an emerald mine in Zambia owned by Errol Musk, Elon’s father. 

“The African mining industry is known to be incredibly exploitative, with child labor [sic] horrible working conditions, disease, abuse of workers, and fatalities all commonplace. The workers in these mines are mostly black native residents of African countries, while the owners are usually the descendants of rich, white colonists. Musk is not a ‘self-made billionaire’, he comes from an extremely privileged family that squeezed millions of dollars out of some of the poorest nations in the world.”