If history, recent and centuries past, has taught those who’ve studied it anything it’s that the Promethean belief in humanity’s perpetually linear progress is a fallacy-ridden myth. And well, if Prometheus were to have met a single modern individual, and that individual was Nick Fuentes, he would have reevaluated his good intentions and dutifully returned the stolen fire to Mount Olympus instead of giving it to humanity.
How can we not feel the threatening pull of a regressive movement when decades of hard-won women’s rights are being thrown down the drain and their newfound vulnerability is being celebrated by the same individuals women wouldn’t dare touch with a ten-foot pole? That’s not on women, that’s on the glaringly bright red flags with legs, some of whom have tweeted:
Men I know have told me they felt sick to their stomachs upon learning of the new Fuentes-original incel slogan. That’s the normal reaction when you suddenly feel like you’ve been pulled into a prequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. On the other hand, you have immature goblins, who never acquired the values to grow into decent men, who celebrate the idea — and that’s not to call it a repressed male-supremacist kink — of having control of what women can and cannot do with their own bodies.
Women and their allies are not backing down
Imagine saying the most grotesquely misogynistic viral statement of the year — and that’s saying something — and then having the shamelessness and gall to not only double down with pride but take it several steps further. This is the same rare, but certainly not extinct, breed of straight males who divert from the norm because their egos get inflated with their extraordinary power to make all women collectively as dry as the Sahara, the same men prompting women to opt for the bear.
Besides having said what’s clipped in the TikTok above, The New Yorker also quoted Nick Fuentes’ response in a video addressing the backlash: “Women are f***ing re******. How many TikToks have you seen in the last forty-eight hours of women crying and filming themselves crying?”
Oh yes, how dare women feel like they are less than human beings worthy of respect and dignity when their rights are literally being stripped away and the walls of patriarchy are narrowing in on them, and sexually frustrated woman-hating troglodytes — a curse of their own making — clap and cheer. Yes, how dare they.
Learning that Fuentes has never had a girlfriend is like learning the sky is blue. When a woman shows up at his doorstep he reacts as if she were a wild vicious animal: by pepper spraying her.
It’s almost hard to believe Fuentes is a real person, birthed of a real human woman. For brief moments, I’m inclined to think he’s nothing but the universe’s biggest troll, giving Tony Hinchcliffe a run for his money when it comes to earning the title of Supreme Lord of the Edgelords.
Even if — let’s run with the hypothetical for a second — Fuentes was only spouting the most despicable claptrap for clicks and clout, that would not in any way downplay the actual impact of his barbaric rhetoric. According to The Washington Post: “The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which tracks online harassment and hate speech, reported a 4,600% increase in the usage of the terms “your body, my choice” and “get back in the kitchen” on X.”
Thankfully, most people are reasonable enough to see how atrocious and condemnable Fuentes’ pejorative view of women is. “At what point do authorities get involved?” the gentleman above asks, “He’s effectively saying, without saying it, ‘go ahead and do whatever you want. Do all those bad things'” And as the retired veteran argues, this kind of obscenely hateful rhetoric should be outside the realm of free speech.
I have a kindred way of thinking about free speech to J. S. Mill in On Liberty. We should leave Fuentes’ hateful tweet up for everyone to know the divisive toxicity he poses to society’s already existing systemic issues, without allowing him to be left laughing with impunity. Words, if they can hurt as much as actions, should have appropriate consequences with recourse to the law.