{"id":42190,"date":"2026-04-03T07:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T14:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=42190"},"modified":"2026-04-03T23:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T06:19:09","slug":"why-the-manosphere-has-an-antisemitism-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/why-the-manosphere-has-an-antisemitism-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the manosphere has an antisemitism problem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Miriam Eve Mora<\/a>, University of Michigan<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toward the end of Netflix\u2019s \u201cInto the Manosphere,\u201d documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux chats in Marbella, Spain, with British influencer Ed Matthews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe people who run the world, they don\u2019t have our best intentions,\u201d says Matthews, speaking in the language of the manosphere \u2013 where some influencers and viewers believe they have tapped into a deeper truth about reality and power. When Theroux asked who controlled all of that, Matthews shrugged and answered this complex question very simply: \u201cThe Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s part of a three-minute digression from the film\u2019s focus on masculinity, with multiple influencers making antisemitic claims about global conspiracies<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The manosphere is a catchall term for websites, forums, blogs and influencers promoting a particular kind of hypermasculinity, from the belief that women and feminism are the cause of men\u2019s problems to calls to legalize rape<\/a>. Groups within it \u2013 including pickup artists, men\u2019s rights groups and \u201cinvoluntary celibate\u201d or \u201cincel\u201d communities<\/a> \u2013 portray themselves as victims of modernity. In their eyes<\/a>, the global economy is to blame for their unsatisfactory job prospects, feminism is to blame for their failures with women, minority rights are forcing them to relinquish their privilege as straight men, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And those digital spaces are rife with antisemitism<\/a>. Some prominent influencers openly deny the Holocaust, call for violence against Jews and spread global conspiracy theories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a historian<\/a> of Jewish gender and antisemitism<\/a>, I know the connections between misogyny and antisemitism have deep roots. For centuries, a frequent tactic of antisemitism has been to attack Jewish men<\/a>, deriding their masculinity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Centuries-old tropes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the Middle Ages and into the 20th century, empires and nations across Europe established laws and practices that held Jewish men apart, not allowing them access to full citizenship. In many areas, Jews were not allowed to vote<\/a>, to own land, to hold public office, to hold rank in the military<\/a> or to duel with their peers<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Jewish men chat outside a shop in Krasilov, Ukraine, in the early 1900s. History & Art Images via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Antisemitic rhetoric often portrayed Jewish men as feminine or fragile, and inherently different. Those beliefs extended into the most severe antisemitic tropes and beliefs. For example, the blood libel, which falsely claims that Jews require the blood of gentile children to make their Passover matzo, was frequently linked to a lesser-known antisemitic claim: that Jewish men menstruated<\/a> and therefore needed the blood of gentiles to replenish themselves. Other antisemitic beliefs claimed that Jews were too weak and cowardly to fight in the military, that they were dominated by Jewish women, or that circumcision made them more akin to women themselves<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger would have fit in well on a manosphere podcast. He excoriated Jewish manhood along with his misogynistic views of women in his 1903 book \u201cSex and Character<\/a>.\u201d \u201cJust as in reality there is no such thing as the \u2018dignity of women,\u2019 it is equally impossible to imagine a Jewish \u2018gentleman,\u2019\u201d he wrote, allowing that even \u201cthe most superior woman is still infinitely inferior to the most inferior man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

American soil<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Immigrants to the United States, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, were shaped by these ideas and experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The European Jews who settled in America in the 19th and 20th centuries largely made their way in commerce and trade and tended to settle in cities. At the time, however, the frontier \u2013 with its rugged cowboys, miners and railroad men \u2013 defined American manhood<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Jewish arrivals, coming from European nations that had limited Jewish male participation in so many areas, had developed an alternative masculinity<\/a>, focused on devotion to learning and on \u201ceydlkayt\u201d<\/a> \u2013 a Yiddish word meaning gentleness and sensitivity. After arriving in the U.S., some Jews remained devoted to this form of manhood, but others fought to acculturate and access the more mainstream forms of masculinity<\/a> they had been barred from in their or their parents\u2019 countries of origin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the earliest of American masculinity influencers was President Theodore Roosevelt<\/a>, who touted his own transformation from a timid, effeminate man \u2013 local presses mocked him in his early career \u2013 to a rugged outdoorsman. \u201cThe great bulk of the Jewish population \u2026 are of weak physique,\u201d he wrote in 1901<\/a>. Though he blamed this on centuries of oppression, he saw it as a tangible difference discernible in the Jewish body and spirit. Roosevelt advocated a model of redemptive manhood through rugged outdoorsmanship and the strenuous life<\/a>, and saw masculinity as a means to dominate and control races he deemed inferior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jews arguably enjoyed more rights in America than anywhere else in modern times, but they were still excluded from institutions of masculine camaraderie<\/a>. Well into the 20th century, Jews were restricted from joining prestigious athletic clubs, fraternal societies, high military ranks and country clubs, though some responded by forming their own venues, like the City Athletic Club of New York<\/a>. Most of these restrictions concluded with the end of Jewish quotas<\/a> in U.S. higher education in the 1960s and 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Jewish fraternity brothers, including the author\u2019s great-grandfather, Ezra Sensibar, right, pose for a Northwestern homecoming celebration in Evanston, Ill., in 1923. Sensibar Family Collection\/Miriam Mora<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Conspiracies today<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s manosphere not only builds on this legacy but also presents something new. Its embrace of antisemitic conspiracy theories allows men who see themselves as victims to explain multiple grievances at once without confronting their own shortcomings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than two decades ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified a conspiracy theory<\/a> emerging on the American right: the belief that \u201ccultural Marxists\u201d were intent on destroying American culture. In particular, some proponents blamed Jews for planting progressive ideas and movements, including feminism and gender identity, as part of efforts to weaken white men\u2019s dominance<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is blatant in the manosphere rhetoric, when figures like Myron Gaines<\/a> blame Jews<\/a> for what they see as destructive forces to Western civilization, from feminism and communism to pornography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael Broschowitz, a researcher at the Middlebury Institute\u2019s Center for Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, explains the manosphere\u2019s tilt into antisemitism as the result of three driving forces<\/a>. First, antisemitism serves as a one-size-fits-all answer, claiming to explain lots of problems at once. Second, algorithms designed to maximize engagement amplify extreme content. Lastly, global online communities can quickly remix antisemitic ideas to fit different cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All three of these explanations are important. But I would argue that there is a crucial piece missing: Masculinity and antisemitism have been traversing the centuries hand in hand. The conspiratorial thinking that blossoms in the manosphere blames Jewish men for weakening masculinity. Because in the manosphere, failures of manhood are never your own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miriam Eve Mora<\/a>, Managing Director of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, University of Michigan<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Miriam Eve Mora, University of Michigan Toward the end of Netflix\u2019s \u201cInto the Manosphere,\u201d documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux chats in Marbella, Spain, with British influencer Ed Matthews. \u201cThe people who run the world, they don\u2019t have our best intentions,\u201d says Matthews, speaking in the language of the manosphere \u2013 where some influencers and viewers believe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":42191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8025,827,10,36,38,6],"tags":[12204,2948,365,17162,13913,885,891,886,860,17622,316,2930,6610,1976],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42190"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42192,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42190\/revisions\/42192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}