Coleman Hughes, a 28-year-old political commentator and author, says self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate's soaring popularity among young people is a response to the “feminization” of popular culture. .
“To the extent that masculine, macho politics like Andrew Tate's are popular, part of the reason for that is a backlash against the feminization of this culture,” Hughes said.
He pointed to the fight against “toxic masculinity” perpetuated by the left, especially in the education sector, which sometimes shames normally boyish behavior, such as policing horses as part of an “anti-bullying” movement. It extends to everything.
“As a reaction to that excess, it creates a vacuum where someone like Andrew Tate can come in and just talk about fighting women and denigrating women,” Hughes said in the latest episode. .I've never had a conversation like this before.”, a podcast hosted by The Post’s Ricky Schrott on Bill Maher’s Club Random Network.
British-American Tate boasts more than 10 million followers on X and runs the unofficial Hustlers University with his brother Tristan. Tate has previously said women “must be held accountable” for sexual assault and other inflammatory comments, which led to her being banned from most other social media platforms. . The brothers are currently awaiting trial in Romania on sex crime charges.
In response to a variety of social commentary, from left-wing headlines like “Toxic Masculinity Is Killing Us,” to female-dominated mainstream publications like Vogue, Hughes also spoke out against Generation Z. of men are becoming more conservative, he said, and are being bombarded with just such exaggerated anti-men messages. Young people at the opposite end of the spectrum.
“As we move into… third wave feminism… it's actually a constant condemnation of toxic masculinity and making boys and men feel guilty and wrong for more typical male behaviors. And I think there's going to be a backlash against that,' and that backlash is expressed politically as conservatism,” Hughes said in the episode that aired Wednesday.
“I'm not the first to observe that contemporary conservative politics has a more masculine character than liberal politics,” he added.
The 28-year-old author and political commentator skyrocketed to national prominence while a student at Columbia University for his thoughtful critiques of identity politics and racial essentialism. She said many women of her generation seem to be treating this as a new “secular religion.”
“At every point throughout the last 100 years of American history, women have been more religious than men,” Hughes explained. “What's happening now is that a new religion is coming into the secular vacuum of America and the Western left. That's intersectionality. So young women who have historically been more religious in general In some ways, it's not at all surprising that such a religion would embrace a new religion so quickly. ”
His 2024 book, The End of Racial Politics: An Argument for a Colorblind America, is a return to Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision that we judge each other by the content of our character, not our appearances. is claimed. This prompted “The View” host Sunny Hostin to accuse Hughes of being a “charlatan” and a “pawn.”
“Critical race theory just sounds like academic elitist bullshit: It’s right to hate the right,” Hughes says. “We reject the way Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement talked about race.”
Hughes, who is black and Puerto Rican, says he first became interested in racial politics while studying at Columbia University, where “white supremacy” was an omnipresent boogeyman.
“I…why other black kids… [at Columbia] “When I walk on campus as a black person who doesn't feel any racism, I think white supremacy is here every day,” he said.
“Why is there such a gap between what looks like reality and what looks like the dominant perspective?”
He was also particularly horrified when the school held orientation events that divided students into “affinity groups” by race. There, perhaps, students could discuss their racial experiences with people who look like them.
Hughes said that while some of his professors at Columbia were excellent, he was shocked to learn how politically immature his colleagues were.
“I find that most students who engage in political issues are complete idiots, inquisitive, and completely unopened to views with which they disagree. , he claimed, following the worst professors at Columbia University down the most intellectually bankrupt path the world of thought has to offer.
As a supporter of Israel, Hughes was not surprised to see his campus descend into chaos over the past year after Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel. ” he said.
Hughes said the university has made several positive changes to deal with encampments and loud protests, including adopting institutional neutrality and teaching students about free speech during orientation. Ultimately, he doesn't believe any changes will be long-lasting.
“I have little faith that the hypocrisy exposed before October 7 will lead to some kind of permanent or stable state of equality,” Hughes said. “My concern is that the administrators in charge of these decisions are too unprincipled and weathervane-like.”
