photo by: Tribune Content Agency

Clarence Page

Far-right streamer Nick Fuentes, who usually welcomes publicity, received the type he probably didn’t want after Donald Trump’s election victory.

The 26-year old white supremacist and antisemite, who has been banned from multiple social media sites for violating hate speech policies, posted on X: “Your body, my choice. Forever.”

Although Fuentes has denied being a white supremacist, the U.S. Department of Justice characterized him as such in a brief related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. And, judging from the snippets of his opinions that I have heard, Including his trolling about women’s bodies, he appears to fit the description of an all-around bigot.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which tracks online hate speech, reported this consequence of Fuentes’ tweet: a 4,600% increase in the usage of the terms “your body, my choice” and “get back in the kitchen” on X during a 24-hour period, according to the Washington Post.

In response, women started trolling the troll, posting messages aimed at Fuentes and “doxxing” him with suggestions to send tampons, sex toy and other appropriate gifts to his home.

“His address, my choice,” one clever user wrote.

Kids, do not try this at home. Two wrongs don’t make a right, no matter how amusing it may seem.

Such is the price of carefully cultivated infamy. A longtime denizen of the internet’s dark fringes, Fuentes’ renown has grown by leaps after his suspended account on Elon Musk’s X was reinstated earlier this year.

A known leader among the angry grievance gangs in the online hive of far-right and neo-Nazi trolls widely known as the “manosphere,” among other labels, Fuentes should not be viewed as anything more than a nuisance, in my view.

And, in fairness — and under advice offered forcefully by my millennial generation son — I don’t want to give the impression that every fan of Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate or other hairy-chested manly men streamers is a member of the angry manosphere.

Rather, the manosphere conversation is a product of the widespread anger, frustration and disenchantment that has led to the surprisingly large drop-off in support AND votes for the Democratic Party’s candidates.

Trump’s winning strategy involved luring and enlisting mostly a male-oriented following that was largely voting for the first time. That formerly apathetic group paid off well for Trump in his previous campaigns. But it worked for him even more in his contest against Democrat Kamala Harris. He pulled out all the stops and it paid off even more.

Scott Galloway, a New York University marketing professor who has studied disengaged young men for decades, told CNN that this election should be remembered as the “testosterone podcast election.”

For the first time in U.S. history, a 35-year-old man without a college diploma is making less than his parents were, Galloway observed, citing averages.

“Against that, do (such issues as) trans rights or the territorial sovereignty of Palestinians even register on your screen?”

In other words, Galloway is saying what many other critics, including me, have said about today’s Democrats and Harris’ campaign: With its late start, unclear agenda and unfocused message, it failed to excite a critical number of otherwise persuadable voters as, day after day, the polls hardly moved from a 50-50 tie.

Kamala Harris’ campaign was “predicated on the dominance and continuance” of a presumed “monoculture,” Jon Caramanica wrote in the New York Times. As a member in good standing of the monoculture, Harris could bask in the endorsements of Oprah, Beyonce and Taylor Swift.

Meanwhile, Caramanica continued, “Trump, denied access to this monoculture, took an approach that was both fragmentary and more modern — and in many ways more attuned to the rhythm of a young person’s media diet. He leaned into the evanescent, the niche, the lightly scandalous.”

Harris did do some fun podcasts like “Call Her Daddy” and “Club Shay Shay,” but as Caramanica pointed out, they did little to change the narrative of her campaign.

Ever since Barack Obama made effective use of Twitter and other social media in the 2008 presidential race, we have seen new technology create new media that have played a central campaign role.

But, contrary to Marshall McLuhan’s famous line, the medium is not always the message. Sure, give Trump credit for finding a medium through which to reach disaffected young men. In a tossup race, they helped put him on top.

But one wonders if the result would have been different if Harris had reached out to this group with even a marginally more effective message, regardless of the media in question. To win over voters, you have to show them that you understand their problems and that, even when you may not have all the answers, you still truly want to solve those problems.

As hard as it may be for Democrats to admit, Trump made a more persuasive case to those outside the monoculture.

— Clarence Page is a columnist with Tribune Content Agency.