My friend believes the left is too misandrist and has fallen for the alt-right.

Frequent-Wall4836 · 2025-05-02T04:45:12+00:00

Well yeah that’s kinda bound to happen. You can talk to him but if he wants to dismiss it he will. But yeah toxic discourse definitely fueled his resentment so try some neutral non confrontational discourse because though it’s “not your job to educate him” if you don’t someone else will. Thats why it boggles me when radfems say “it’s not my job to educate you. “ “I’m not obligated to coddle or appeal to men”. Radfems who are misandrist and engage like that is like being a communist and telling Ancaps it’s not your job to educate them. Like yeah you don’t have to but someone else will.

addition · 2025-05-02T05:09:03+00:00

It sounds like he felt disempowered by the left and is siding with people that make him feel empowered.

I would encourage him to try and step outside of the current groups of people claiming they are left and right, and consider his beliefs from a first principles approach. He doesn’t have to adopt anyone’s beliefs, he doesn’t have to look up to anyone to tell him what to believe.

Sure, the modern left hates men but so does the right, just in a different way. The right denies your individual identity and insists you’re defective if you aren’t an impossibly masculine, caricature of a person. They are denying men as human beings with their own thoughts and feelings. Is that really the future we want for men? Is that the future we want for anyone? To have caricatures forced upon them?

This is the left’s distaste for gender roles worded differently and frankly I think it’s a more effective way to talk about it. Whenever I hear a snobby leftist with purple hair talk about gender roles I roll my eyes, but talking about it in terms of denying individuality and forcing people into a prison hits different. It’s also thinking about ideas as objectively as possible instead of through the warped lens of modern political propaganda.

Tek_Knowledge_ · 2025-05-02T19:47:51+00:00

Progressive liberal here. I think there's a lot going on here with your friend, but the left has definitely abandoned men which is a terrible idea politically. Whatever small gains they made with women because the women that would support them were already, has been eroded by a slew of especially young men leaving the party and being recruited by the right.

The message from the left to men is that "you're the problem", and "if you don't support women, gays, or literally anything they want then you're a misogynist". But here's the thing, it's men that are suffering right now by the numbers. In every category including social media, careers, income, college degrees women are making huge strides and even dominating. Nothing is expected of them, everything is expected of us and the bar is raised every year because we're still expected to make more than our partners.

As a man you're expected to make the first move but the left teaches women that men are creeps for doing so and to report them. So no matter what we do we lose, and the leftist culture makes it clear we don't matter to them. So although I think your friend has become extremist, I'm afraid this is the future. We will see this more and more.

gaut80 · 2025-05-02T13:00:01+00:00

Unfortunately, when you hear the men hatred in all left components, they become hard to listen to. And that's a shame. I am left-wing but have the hardest time to go vote for them (precision: not American. But it's the same shit here).

HonestlyKindaOverIt · 2025-05-02T11:58:52+00:00

What are groups on the left offering him? If the answer is “nothing”, then no amount of concern will convince him otherwise. The answer is for the left to seriously focus on men’s issues. Until that happens, this is inevitable.

Imakemyownnamereddit · 2025-05-03T08:27:53+00:00

There is no home among the left for me anymore. I am despised by the modern left for my sexuality or rather lack of sexuality. Like many men who are introverts and don't have the wealth/looks to make up for it. I struggle with dating; because of that the modern left regards me with utter contempt.

It is bizarre, I support women's rights but that isn't enough. I am told that I shouldn't make women and sex my world but as far as the modern left is concerned, that is all that matters. As a man who fails with women I must be toxic and evil.

It is laughable, this is a movement that use to condemn people being judged based on their sexuality. The same movement that campaigned against judging gay men and women, based on their orientation; throws men under the bus based on their sexuality.

Since they call me a monster, for something I cannot control. Why should I give them the time of day?

rump_truck · 2025-05-02T11:53:49+00:00

I fell halfway down the GamerGate pipeline back in the day. The thing that saved me was that I wasn't willing to do to others what they did to me. When bad things happen to you, you can have two reactions, "everyone should have to go through this" or "no one should have to go through this." I chose the latter. Your friend isn't driven by the same motivation I was, because it sounds like he's fine turning it around on other people.

It sounds like for him, it's about escaping the sins of the father and redirecting blame. A lot of people on the left came from religious backgrounds, and rather than getting rid of the religious baggage, a lot of them just changed it. They like to apply the concept of original sin to men, and they really like to blame teenage boys for things that happened before they were born. It sounds like your friend is trying to escape that blame by redirecting it to other demographics, that just so happen to line up with the ones that the right hates.

This sort of thing is exactly why I hate the concept of punching up, and revenge-driven politics. When you get revenge against entire demographics, you're going to hurt innocent people who now have a valid reason to seek revenge against you, and the cycle never ends.

As for what your friend can do, the healthier option is to learn to ignore the blame, but that's easier said than done. If a criticism is leveled at a demographic you belong to, and you don't do that, instead of getting angry and firing back, you can congratulate yourself for being ahead of the curve. Some people lack self-awareness and are too quick to congratulate themselves because they don't realize that they are part of the problem, but even that is healthier than seeking revenge or redirecting blame.

Really the answer is that nobody should be allowed to blame entire demographics for the actions of a few individuals, but we've been working on that for all of history and still haven't cracked it yet.

CompetitiveOwl2 · 2025-05-03T16:11:23+00:00

I don't know what advice to give here. I'm a straight white man. I've got very tired of how acceptable it is to hate me. The natural impulse is to hate back. I believe hate is wrong, I'm a Christian so forgiveness is also a standard I have to hold myself to. It also motivates me to avoid hypocrisy and I'd be a hypocrite to hate in return. I know that just making an effort to step back from your immediate impulse and asses how fair you're being is a good way to prevent a slide into what your friend has fallen into but I'm not sure I know how to get him out of it.

There are anti-IDpol class-first leftists and if you could move him to that side they might help him. The problem is that he's in deep enough to have answers for how you might try to argue him out of his beliefs. Maybe try to find something very traditionally masculine but with left wing types. Proper working class leftists doing mutual aid would probably make his idols look like stupid little boys in comparison. You don't get far with empty words with men (and women) like that. It might be antithetical to what we want to achieve long term but I'm sort of thinking that showing someone who actually lives up to that no nonsense "real man" image who won't stand for any shit but who swings old school, labour union workers first left might shake him out of his delusions. Just a thought, it might fail miserably too.

For your friendship and honestly for his well-being I hope he gets out of this pit. Best of luck.

BhryaenDagger · 2025-05-02T14:25:05+00:00

This has been the fundamental social exploit that the Right has been using to gain the support of those that would never otherwise have swung to them. It's an exploit especially of the tendency of most people to view the false dichotomy of the Right and Left political parties as the only solution. When the Left fails- in this case failing men (but there've been multiple fronts they're now failing on)- the Right then appears like the only or best alternative- or simply a temporary counter which might "balance" the Left's failings. It just plays right into the trap, but it's exactly how Trump won despite being the most conspicuous grifter that's ever run for US President: by taking advantage of a division sewn by the contemporary Left itself, not by any strength of the Right itself. They're the pernicious, opportunistic default. I liken the process to the Left developing a blind spot within which the Right can step in easily and bop the Left on the head to their complete surprise. Ignoring realities don't make them go away: it just makes one ignorant and thereby vulnerable as to an achilles heel.

Jordan Peterson- complete nitwit on pretty much any question not in the Left's blind spot (particularly religion)- can nevertheless appear quite based by simply articulating the reality that the contemporary Left continues to erroneously or insufficiently articulate. He said after Trump's first election that that wasn't a victory for Trump as much as a loss by Hillary: "it was Hillary's election to lose, and she lost it." (paraphrase) So he's well aware of how the process works...

The "traditional" Left involved the progressive tendency of the working class struggling to win reasonable living standards despite social conditions far worse than today... though those social conditions- borne within the disparity between the rich and the rest of us- have largely returned, particularly if viewed globally. Within that struggle to improve living conditions, lots of other social struggles were incorporated- eliminating Jim Crow and segregation, eliminating discrimination against women, and culminating in the normalization of the principle of social equality wherein people are viewed as human beings first and foremost- gays, trans, etc. That was the basis of it, and it was all more or less won and even adopted by the Right- which is more or less written in the OP's "Left credentials"... i.e., without referencing the class basis and espousing "pacifism" which doesn't match the huge Left boost by WW2 veterans returning from war and combat directly w fascism... But that basis of the Left has fundamentally changed.

The Left nowadays is overreaching and floundering, largely because its progressive "tradition" has been lost. The new generation of feminists for the last couple decades or more aren't wed to the working class at all- not as political allies and not socially. They see all those "patriarchal" men in the working class and write us off as one enemy, preferring rich women CEOs and actresses, advocating for women taking the dwindling "middle class" jobs instead, and making entire career paths out of mocking, demonizing, and otherwise undermining men, largely in the entertainment industry. Women lost abortion in the US not due to the brilliant triumph of "fetuses are people too" but because contemporary feminists couldn't care less about the millions of working class women unable to get abortions and maintain jurisdiction over their own reproductive capacity: rich women will always be able to get one. The progressive tendency of "unity" and "solidarity" has been replaced w increasingly bigoted vitriol vs men (and straights and whites and "cis") as if feminism has only ever been about hating men and fighting in a would-be war that would divide the species right down the middle. It's an absurdist, reductionist, and ultimately self-defeating approach- about as absurdist as most of Peterson's political positions and certainly those of the bulk of the "alt-right"- but Peterson (or Trump or Musk or Tate) can simply state, "The Left tends to be hostile to men," and be entirely correct. It's a genuine failing of the prevailing Left to be so divided and unable to stand up to sociopathy. But then the conclusions/solutions that such Right types offer to follow up have never been correct and, as Trump is demonstrating, get far worse. That's arguably how fascism came to power in Germany- a nation otherwise overwhelmingly Leftist at the time- also in a situation of increasingly deepening social inequality on the socio-economic divide.

AfghanistanIsTaliban · 2025-05-02T05:15:08+00:00

”woke” and “soyed”

yeahhh… this is annoying

Whenever I debate righties on the MR sub, they don’t even counter my arguments. Just endless woke-bashing or accusations of feminist sympathy

I think the best way to get your friend out of that rabbit hole is to try to get him to be emotionally available to you. It seems that his obsession with the right mostly comes from aesthetics and culture war topics. Because it seems more like a mental health issue rather than an ideological thing

obviously that doesn’t mean trauma dumping or acting like an armchair therapist, but you should maybe ask him what he is doing and start with mild/trivial questions to catch him off-guard.

also, does he know that LGBTQ+ are commonly portrayed by the right as groomers? Social conservatives rarely make distinctions - he can be gay, trans or bi and they would still go after him or create laws at his expense. Simply mentioning that he has a boyfriend (ie. “my boyfriend said…”, etc) can get him fiercely insulted or even attacked in certain areas/situations.

also bring up the fact that women historically had a slightly more conservative and anti-worker vote than men in the post-WW2 era. GOP women, assembled by Phyllis Schlafly, successfully lobbied against the Equal Rights Amendment which ensured that women were not subject to the draft.

DelaraPorter · 2025-05-02T04:41:19+00:00

I think what I would do in this situation is bring up all the examples of how the alt right also targets him as a man of Hispanic heritage and as a bisexual man. On the top of my head Nick Fuentes may be 1/4 Mexican but constantly hates others like him. Also focus on how much they rely on the same emotional manipulation that false accusers twist male sexuality for their ideological goals.

Observer_7578 · 2025-05-02T04:37:57+00:00

Misandry and toxic Feminism is a right leaning ideology. Swapping genders does not change the spectrum. Common misunderstanding that is intentional to create left leaning strawman arguments that are easily dismissed.

vicendum · 2025-05-03T07:41:42+00:00

First, a hard truth: you may not be able to get John completely out of the alt-right. Once people lock into those kinds of beliefs, it’s incredibly difficult—sometimes impossible—to change them. Trying to force that change often backfires and can damage the relationship beyond repair.

Your best hope is to have a series of serious, honest conversations. Focus on whether there’s still a friendship worth saving. Make it clear that some of his views make you uncomfortable—not to change him, but to let him know how they affect you. If you approach this as an attack, he’ll shut down. But if you approach it with care and boundaries, you might keep the door open.

When he shares his views, listen—really listen. You don’t have to agree, but try to understand where he’s coming from. See if there’s any common ground. If he ever asks how you can support the left as a man, you can explain that no political side is a monolith. You can disagree with parts of a platform and still feel that working within it is the best way to improve things. Change doesn’t come from abandoning ship—it comes from staying in and helping steer.

Your most realistic goal isn’t to change him—it’s to reach some level of mutual understanding. That might be enough to keep the friendship alive. However, you also need to prepare for the possibility that he’s too deep into his views for reconciliation to be possible. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but it’s something to keep in mind.

These conversations won’t be quick or easy. Don’t expect everything to be resolved in one talk. If you see even a small sign that he’s open to understanding, it’s worth continuing. However, if it starts taking a toll on your mental health or crosses your values too deeply, it’s okay to let go. A friendship is worth fighting for—but not at the cost of your own well-being.

Baby_Arrow · 2025-05-03T12:44:01+00:00

Any ideology can allow people to fall like this.

For me it was while I was deep in progressive politics. I became bitter, resentful, nihilistic, etc.

Rick_RG · 2025-05-03T17:55:11+00:00

He/she is right btw

theirishembassy · 2025-05-02T19:38:55+00:00

I agree with the majority of a left leaning ideology but, like your friend, have some MAJOR issues with other people on my side and how they conduct themselves.

the difference is, these issues don’t taint my personal ideology. I don’t get into an argument with another lefty over my preference for non-violence and go “welp.. that’s it. I guess I hate queers now!”.

if he still believes in leftist principles, he’s leftist, and it’s best to remind him of that fact every now and again and hammer the bigoted nails when they spring up.

if he doesn’t, then the same applies IMO. if hatered can be conditioned, it can be unconditioned.

ComparisonClean7249 · 2025-05-04T09:35:32+00:00

He's right. Absolutely right and I doubt he is the racist douche bag you are trying to make him out to be.

SentientReality · 2025-05-02T06:28:30+00:00

I can totally understand being pushed away by the "left" and by feminism. I can understand him wanting to try out some new "heterdox" ideologies that go against the mainstream. I can understand wanting to be "edgy" to a degree.

I can't understand this: "idolizing Donald Trump and Elon Musk"; "Andrew Tate fan". If you can't see that those asswipes are toxic grifters then I don't know what to say.

Nor can I understand being rabidly racist, antisemitic, and deliberately trying hard to be a brainless MAGA asshole.

Perhaps someone could explain how/why people are able to do those things. Sheer lack of any critical thinking ability? Combined with crippling self-hatred and vulnerable narcissism? Maybe that mixture could cause it?

Banake · 2025-05-03T01:36:18+00:00

Send your friend this link.

Comicauthority · 2025-05-03T09:06:37+00:00

You have tried to convince him normally, which did not work. Other things worth trying could be to expose how ridiculous the views and talking points are, and straight up make fun of them. Because alt-right talking points are, in large part, stupid and ridiculous

A third way is to try and get him off the internet and out of the echo chamber.

A fourth would be less confrontational, and more about having a deep conversation where you talk about how he came to hold those views and why he believes them. Give him a genuine chance to convince you, and he may in turn be more open to be convinced himself.

CluelessThinker · 2025-05-03T23:44:23+00:00

https://youtu.be/DHHqQDKzjTg?si=PATZxCcl55em3tzs

Show him this video. If he isn't too far gone then he'll see it as reasonable and understand that the situation he's in is shared by many men and he doesn't need the left's, right's, or center's approval to figure out what being a man is.

You can watch the video too if you want. You know your friend more than I do. It doesn't address the bigotry. It addresses why men feel lost, and explains how men are suffering, and what he can do instead of taking the red pill.

If you want to help him, when you're in conversations with him, try not to combat his bigotry as counterintuitive as that sounds. A lot of people who fall down this road are in a place of hurt, and if you criticize him, it shows that you care more about those issues than his suffering or emotions if that makes sense. It would put you into an enemy category. Some people also stick to this level of behavior because it gives them a sense of community where they don't have one, if you become closer to him than they are, you would be his community and can help him move away from those toxic perspectives.

Instead, try to find a way to convince him to seek professional help from a therapist. Although you may have to build rapport with him first to the point where he can trust you. A good therapist will be able to unpack this.

You can also set a boundary of where you don't want to talk about politics. Not because it's wrong, but you want to prioritize your friendship with him over arguing about politics. If he doesn't respect it, you can repeat it how many times you want.

This advice is given with the assumption that he isn't too far gone. If he is, though, then you may have to call it quits if nothing is working.

We are in the disinformation age, and sadly, it takes vulnerable people, chews them up, and spits them out to become conspiracy theory bigots to the point where they are unable to see reality. You have to fight against all of the disinformation, but something you have that they don't is that you can actually communicate with him and affirm his emotional needs or help his emotional problems.

ThatSyd · 2025-05-04T15:58:25+00:00

I appreciate how much effort people are putting into understanding phenomenon like the "alt-right pipeline." I can totally relate.

So the most helpful thing I can do is recommend this book "The Myth of Left and Right," or just listen to the authors discuss it on an episode of a podcast or something on YouTube.

Basically, the whole idea of a spectrum is garbage. It obscures the truth.There are definitely two tribes, but what it means to be independent is to be somewhat less tribalistic. Less susceptible to allowing motivated reasoning to come to our conclusions, believing that there's some logical connection between all of the issues our tribe is emphasizing.

I think it's an important book, especially in an age where people are losing friends and family over such intense levels of tribalism.

I'm not saying that you and your friend won't disagree on certain issues, but I think people put too much emphasis on a lot of issues that, if we're honest with ourselves, we only really care so much about because of the intensity of the tribalism.

NHS_24 · 2025-05-04T18:50:52+00:00

It was bound to happen–

These days, it feels almost inevitable—left-wing parties have increasingly turned into echo chambers obsessed with Women, LGBTQ+ issues, and feminism to the point of religious devotion. Criticize any of these topics, even constructively, and you're immediately branded with every slur in the book: misogynist, incel, anti-gay, anti-women, patriarchal villain—you name it.

Somehow, in all this noise, men's issues have been completely forgotten—or worse, dismissed outright. The left doesn’t just prioritize women, LGBTQ+, and feminism; it often only talks about those. The conversation rarely—if ever—touches on male struggles, male problems, mental health, or societal pressure on men.

And here's the kicker: while some feminist groups preach inclusivity and say “feminism helps everyone,” others—and now major leftist circles—flatly say, “Nope, it’s only for women.” This contradiction has pushed many men away, not necessarily toward the right, but away from a space that feels increasingly hostile to them.

To be clear, I don’t idolize the right either. Right-wing feminism often feels like a fever dream—way worse than the left's version. But at least conservatives still talk about men. They might be wrong on many fronts, but they haven't erased men from the discussion.

It's no wonder that many men, across race and class, find the right more welcoming—even if reluctantly. Meanwhile, the left has lost the plot. Nobody seems to know what it stands for anymore, beyond recycling slogans like a broken record.

And as for your friend who’s drifting into right-wing ideology? He may not come back. That side has its own cultish obsessions—MAGA chants, white nationalism, christian nationalism, guns, Christianity, Christ is king, support Israel genocide, Christian Zionism, Elon Musk and Donald Trump worship—and a growing appetite for hate. Be careful. If he dives too deep, you might become his ideological enemy just for being different. For your own peace of mind and safety, it may be wise to slowly and respectfully step back.

Atlas421 · 2025-05-05T10:33:27+00:00

This is tough, it sounds like he's deeper than I ever was. And I don't remember the exact steps that got me out of the pipeline except curating my online feed to avoid rage bait and checking my sources via MediaBiasFackCheck.com.

Chances are he'll grow out of it, but it's also possible he won't and I can see why you don't want that to happen. He might benefit from watching ShoeOnHead content, she's left leaning, but also very critical of cosmo and buzzfeed feminism that deserves criticism the most. And she's mostly aware of male issues. Her content helped me realize that I don't have to agree with every leftist on everything and that I still disagree more with the right.

classic_jersey · 2025-05-16T13:10:41+00:00

Because they are. It sucks that we’re gonna lose another one due to this, but at this point, it’s on the party and the people in it. They are driving men away with their discourse, and their heads are so far up their own asses, they won’t even acknowledge their part in it

AmericanDesertWitch · 2025-05-19T12:10:01+00:00

Tell him, "I understand, just like those you idolize have a deep need to "belong" to something, but that is weak. I thought you were stronger than that."

SpicyMarshmellow · 2025-05-02T15:41:45+00:00

It really sucks and I'm very sorry to say it, but it sounds like your friend is pretty far gone. You're probably not wrong in identifying how things got started, but I think there's more than just the starting point going on to reach the point of wishing Hitler had won WW2.

I don't have any advice on how to help him. At this point, that can only be achieved by reaching deep into very personal knowledge. Trying to reach someone like this is like trying to perform brain surgery with a needle and a sledgehammer. You can't appeal to intellectual honesty. Every rhetorical approach is going to be like taking a sledgehammer to the relationship. All you can do is wield that sledgehammer as gently as you can, and hope your understanding of what's deep beneath that skull is insightful enough that you have a chance of connecting with something deeper than the brainrot with that needle.

I'm not trying to tell you it's impossible. It's possible for a person to be *very skilled* with that needle and sledgehammer, and it's possible to know someone well enough to put that skill to effective use. But I think that is realistically the nature of the task you're faced with if you want to help him.

Things are getting pretty dark in the USA these days, and they are likely to get much darker in the near future. I think the more useful advice an internet forum can offer you is to think seriously about what you think John is going to be capable of in the times ahead, and where you want to be in relation to him when those times come.

Sydnaktik · 2025-05-02T08:05:28+00:00

I wrote a whole wall of text, but for your friend's particular situation, I think you best bet might be to get him to watch Destiny (the streamer, not the game).

Destiny is bisexual, anti-soy and protective of his personal power. And he's currently getting sued for sex crimes (and he is guilty of committing some improper sex stuff but none of the stuff that he's being sued for is actually true so he's going to win the court case). So his persona esthetics should be a perfect match for your friend. But he is also extremely anti-maga. His political ideology is best described as neo-liberal (which however far left you may be, you should agree is light years better than the alt right). But he is also extremely anti-maga and anti-alt right.

And here's my original wall of text:

That's a real tough one. I'll second what addition said. This is about power. He's recognized at a very young age how little power he has and how vulnerable he is and that the social system he lives in will not protect him from abuse.

But he understands it more on an emotional level than on an intellectual level.

The alt right understands this emotional response and seeks to exploit it. One trick that is used is to present things as gambling: as in, the current system is screwing you over, but join us in creating a truly inegalitarian system and you'll get YOUR chance to be one of the winners.

When it comes to emotional persuasion, I generally follow the parable of the two wolves. The one that wins is the one you feed. The more you argue with him about the alt-right the more you feed his alt-right wolf. It hurts more than it helps.

Do things with him that help improve his emotional perspective on life and society that goes in opposition to the emotional world view that the alt-right presents him. Help him understand the value of a well-functioning and fair society and how society right now is structured to be fair and function relatively well for him, if you just learn how it works and learn how to use it properly.

One thing I've found works great for this is to watch very real (non dramatized) court room videos. Judge Fleischer on youtube is my favorite.

But also understanding the system in terms of what it can offer you (tons of government services are available that he could make use of that he doesn't know about). And frankly I think men tend not to look into these things as much as women do, but they really should. It wouldn't be bad for you to do it too. Hell, I should do that way more too.

But also looking into various police services and how they truly work. They're not perfect, but if you understand how they really work you can make them work for you.

Title	My friend believes the left is too misandrist and has fallen for the alt-right.
Author	Still_Alps1804
Upvotes	144
Comments	91
Date	May 2, 2025 4:11 AM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/1kcs6bw/my_friend_believes_the_left_is_too_misandrist_and/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/my-friend-believes-the-left-is-too-misandrist-and.1551195 https://theredarchive.com/post/1551195

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