In November last year, Jordan Peterson—dubbed “custodian of the patriarchy” by the New York Times—flew right-wing leaders from around the world to London, where they launched a full-scale attack on climate science.
The speakers, who were all part of Peterson’s right-wing “think tank,” Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), served as a collective mouthpiece for the views the infamous right-wing influencer had already espoused: that the term “net zero” is a “conspiracy run by narcissistic poseurs”; and that environmental scientists are peddling a “great climate con.” In other words, Peterson’s views can be summarized by the “climate hysteria” iceberg meme—environmentalism is merely a Trojan horse for Marxism.
Peterson is amongst a handful of high-profile and unwaveringly right-wing men to emerge over the last few years, and they all share similar views. Their politics can be summarized as anti-woke; they’re anti-trans and anti-feminist, believers in the notion that “political correctness” has gone mad, and that conservative values are under fire. These so-called manosphere influencers, which include Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Tate, and Joe Rogan, are best-known for their misogyny, but they also share another core value: climate denialism.
The most meme-worthy example comes courtesy of Andrew Tate, the right-wing influencer set to face trial in Romania for accusations of rape and human trafficking. In December 2022, he tweeted a photo of himself with his flashy Bugatti to young climate activist Greta Thunberg, alongside a caption about his 30-plus car collection and their “respective enormous emissions.” It wasn’t the first time that Tate had bragged about his “MASSIVE carbon footprint,” but this Twitter beef in particular blew up—partly due to Thunberg’s “small dick energy” reply, and partly due to a theory that Tate’s back-and-forth with Thunberg inadvertently led to his arrest. Elsewhere, Joe Rogan has signal-boosted climate conspiracy theories on his notorious podcast, and Ben Shapiro argued that impending environmental doom might be a good thing, actually! Needless to say, the manosphere and the climate activist movement aren’t exactly close friends.
It’s all too tempting to dismiss these manosphere overlords as shock jocks, but clearly, their views do chime with some young men. Heavy media focus on youth-led climate justice movements has led to the perception that younger generations are leftist progressives; that Gen Z could save the planet. But new studies complicate this portrait.
In February this year, King’s College London professors Bobby Duffy and Rosie Campbell teamed up for their landmark Emerging Tensions research, which spawned multiple headlines. Their findings showed that, while Gen-Z women are moving further to the left, Gen-Z men are becoming ever more conservative. Perhaps surprisingly, 16% of men aged between 16 and 29 believed that feminism had done “more harm than good.” Three in 10 young men who had heard of Andrew Tate believed that he “raises important points,” and a third of those who knew of Jordan Peterson held favorable views of him.
So, are “manosphere” influencers disengaging Gen-Z men from climate activism? Though the space has rightly gained a reputation for being extreme and reactionary, more nuance is needed to answer the question.
“I had read Richard Reeve’s book Of Boys and Men,” says Duffy of the research, “and it was clear that there are real challenges facing young men, in education outcomes, the changing nature of employment, suicide rates and so on, that could lead to resentment. We shouldn’t just dismiss that as an Andrew Tate effect.” As the research shows, there’s a real fracturing of views between young men and women, “and we need to listen carefully to both,” Duffy says. “That includes much more work on understanding the challenges facing young men today, or we risk that void being filled by celebrities and influencers, and this nascent divide being exacerbated.”
“It’s not really a case of young men being attracted to Tate’s views on women [necessarily]; they’re attracted to the idea of being able to do whatever they want, because they feel like they can’t.”
Journalist Freddie Feltham has spent years researching Andrew Tate, interviewing super-fans and documenting his rise. One of his key takeaways has been that “lots of people weren’t following Andrew Tate for his views on women, they were following him because he’s wealthy,” Feltham explains. “They assume that wealth answers any question of what it means to be a man. [They believe that] if you’re rich, you can get what you want, and what a lot of young people want is still that heteronormative, 16-year-old idea of masculinity: guns, fast cars, lots of attractive, scantily-clad women. It’s not really a case of young men being attracted to Tate’s views on women [necessarily]; they’re attracted to the idea of being able to do whatever they want, because they feel like they can’t.”
This is where the climate crisis factors into the equation. Manosphere influencers lure in viewers with the promise of wealth, relying on the age-old archetype of men as playboy breadwinners. This has to mean that these influencers are also advocates of capitalism, of endless growth and unregulated free markets. By contrast, the climate crisis movement is geared towards de-growth; towards less consumption, less spending, and more conscious choices, because, as Naomi Klein outlines in Hot Money, capitalism cannot solve the climate crisis. When Tate flexes in front of his sports cars and brags about his emissions, he’s saying that he can’t be controlled—and in the eyes of the manosphere, control is what the climate movement is all about.
Crucially, these influencers bank on the attention economy. They only get paid if they get clicks, and Feltham argues this as one of the reasons that the climate crisis is not on their priority list. “I don’t think climate ranks highly as something that generates economy, but [their rejection of the climate crisis] does situate them within a pantheon of views,” he explains. “Climate denialism has a strong link to these very free market, rampant libertarian thinkers, who are all about individualized freedom; the capitalism that doesn’t care about how it makes its money.”
YouTuber Alice Cappelle, who specializes in video essays on urgent social issues, corroborates that climate crisis content tends to gain less attention online, yet she’s long been fascinated by the ways in which gendered stereotypes cloud public perception of climate activism. In 2022, Cappelle released a video essay titled “the manosphere meets the climate movement” after becoming fascinated by “how men talk about themselves when they start getting closer to climate movements,” she tells Atmos. “There’s always this language of becoming softer; this idea that, by joining the movement, they’ve unlearned masculinity and moved closer to their feminine side.”
Even today, environmentalism is culturally coded as feminine. As a 2020 research paper on environmental law spells out, monikers like “earth mother” and “soy boy” exemplify the gendered ways in which we describe the movement. Plant-based diets are coded as feminine, whereas meat-eaters are glorified within the manosphere.
These might be trivial examples, but the success of manosphere influencers shows that there is still a definitive sense of masculinity in crisis. This “crisis” is wide-ranging, but it seems men feel like their job prospects are dwindling; that “masculinity” is becoming a dirty word, that feminism has left them worse off—although, as Cappelle points out, “this idea has existed since ancient times; men have always been in crisis, even when women had no power and absolutely nothing to do with politics.”
Factors like race, class, and sexuality also play a key part in these discussions. The Emerging Tensions study shows that Tate’s views are resonating the most among young men, including young men of color, in the UK.
“There’s always this language of becoming softer; this idea that, by joining the [climate] movement, they’ve unlearned masculinity and moved closer to their feminine side.”
But it’s a complex picture, especially when climate views are factored in. After all, people of color reportedly care more than their white counterparts about climate change, according to a study by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. That’s largely because Global Majority communities, especially in the Global South, are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis due to histories of extraction and exploitation by countries in the Global North as well as ongoing colonialism. As for the manosphere, there have been substantive claims of racism within the movement, including from Tate himself.
In terms of class, the manosphere seeks to lure in fans from low income backgrounds with their philosophies of wealth and recycled iterations of the age-old “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” narrative. As is often the case, though, these narratives are void of any structural critique of capitalism; evidence shows that unchecked capitalism breeds extreme poverty and wealth inequality. It’s a relentlessly individualist ethos, which dovetails with a lack of forums for men to discuss their feelings. When combined, these factors help explain why suicide is still such a big killer of young men.
When it comes to the manosphere and the climate movement, there are a few surprising cases—namely, Elon Musk. “I hate him,” says Alice, “but this guy managed to turn electric cars into something cool. I was having this discussion with a friend, and he said the most important thing is to find healthy masculinity models that look like the toxic masculinity guys, and then progressively change standards until gender isn’t part of the equation.” None of this is to absolve Musk—he’s a known union-buster, not to mention the fact that Tesla has been linked to slavery in the Democratic Republic of Congo—but it does go to show that some progress can come from unusual places.
The current branding of climate activism is part of the reason that it seemingly doesn’t appeal to young men in huge numbers. The movement is still seen globally as mostly white and middle-class, a stereotype entrenched by whitewashed narratives, corporate profiteering, and the systemic erasure of activists of color, many of whom are on the frontlines of the climate justice movement and who work tirelessly across the Global South to save their environments from legacies of climate colonialism.
Environmentalism might not be on the manosphere’s priority list, but research on these self-styled male influencers is identifying key demographic fractures, and adding nuance to broad-strokes stereotypes based on gender and generation. It’s not the case that fans of men like Tate, Peterson, and Rogan are guaranteed acolytes of climate denialism; some of them simply came for the videos on how to become a millionaire, and happened to stick around. But their views are arguably part of the reason that gender, not generation, is reportedly the biggest factor in shaping opinions on the climate crisis.
What’s needed is a deeper understanding of the systemic injustices that drive the issues—like mental health, poverty, lack of education, misogyny—underpinning the success of these men, and a creative approach to climate activism. With stakes this high, the fight to draw more Gen-Z men into climate activism can’t be abandoned.
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Are ‘Manosphere’ Influencers Disengaging Gen-Z Men from Climate Activism?
