Young Incel Fascists Of America

 Ron DeSantis' epic fail of a campaign would be funny, if it weren't so disturbing. Right now, what's interesting about DeSantis is not his run for president, but how he and his campaign think he can get there. 

What's clear is that at least one, possibly two, of DeSantis' younger campaign workers is part of the on-line "edgelord" bullshit surrounding Nazism and incel crap. These are people deeply locked into epistemological closure, where they think they and their coterie of trolls constitutes some sort of mass movement and not just the ravings of a handful of sociopaths.

Yglesias made the absurd claim that the staffers and activists in both parties tend to be young, college educated city dwellers, which tended to tilt actual policy leftwards, as that demographic tends to be more liberal or "mainstream". While his statement was factually accurate about the staffers, the reality is that there are a lot of incredibly toxic young men going to college and then working in GOP politics.

Which of course brings me to Barbie.

Ben Shapiro - perpetually enraged 70 year old man trapped in the body of a 30 year old hobbit - has declared jihad against Barbie, because it's anti-male. That would be - unsurprisingly - a very superficial way to view that movie. The theme of the movie would seem to be the way society shapes our vision of ourselves can be unrealistic and toxic. Part of the plot involves Ken importing patriarchy into Barbieworld, and it turns out it makes him miserable, too. That's not an attack on men, but on the way we can limit ourselves by the way we conceive of ourselves through the lens of societal expectations.

Yes, that is what the Barbie movie is about.

But the petulant pissing and moaning from people like Shapiro does land on fertile ears among a lot of young men. Hell, I feel like my main job as a parent right now is making sure those ideas don't infect our sons. And those bitter incel type can connect online and create a "community" the way Nazis used to sites like Stormfront.

Anyway, Ron DeSantis bet his campaign that that type of shitheel was the key to his victory. It's similar to the way Jason Aldean wanted to appeal not only to people who want to lynch BLM protestors, but those who would buy his record as soon as the "woke mob" pointed out that it was some pretty racist shit.

Dog whistle politics were concerning when Lee Atwater pumped that filth into American politics, but not we have air raid siren politics, and I just hope it fails miserably beyond just DeSantis' campaign.