Close watchers of the MAGA movement have been chronicling the alarming escalation of both violent intimidation and overt white supremacy in recent weeks. Donald Trump, of course, now begs his followers on a nearly daily basis to murder his perceived enemies. But the rhetoric is spiraling, with people like Fox News host Greg Gutfeld openly calling for civil war. Meanwhile, Christopher Rufo — a right hand man for Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla. — recently hosted a forum that pushed establishment Republicans to build a “bridge” to the so-called “dissident right,” including some open white nationalists. He may get his wish, as one of the top contenders for Speaker of the House, Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., described himself as “David Duke without the baggage.”

The radicalism of the right is growing as the GOP careens swiftly towards nominating Trump as their presidential candidate, despite his 91 felony indictments in four jurisdictions. But, as anyone who has studied cults can tell you, they never limit their escalations to violence or hateful ideologies. There’s almost always a weird sexual component, as cult leaders come up with ever stranger rules and regulations to control the sexual expression of their followers.

The MAGA movement is no different. The cult-like following of Trump always had an unsettling mix of incel-inflected misogyny, coupled with a homophobia that is somehow also homoerotic. But it’s been rapidly getting worse in recent months. Even more frightening is how determined they are to inflict their sexual hang-ups on the rest of the country.

Gutfeld, who claims to be a “comedian,” has long positioned himself on Fox News as an everyman character. He’s meant to make audiences feel that normal people can be Republicans, and not just Bible-hugging weirdoes or camo-clad militia nuts. But, as his civil war rant makes clear, lately he’s been channeling a more David Koresh-esque vibe, and invariably that comes with some sexual weirdness.

Last week, Gutfeld hosted a far-right figure named Hotep Jesus, who is known primarily for being an apologist for white supremacists and anti-semites. Hotep Jesus, whose real name is Bryan Sharpe, was on the show to promote a “dating” blog that is, in actuality, propaganda for domestic abuse. As Media Matters chronicled, Sharpe regards it as a form of adultery if women are “allowed” to work or vote. “Imagine guts, sweat, and tears shed only to watch your woman get dolled up only to prance around another man’s office while he gives her marching orders,” Sharpe writes, claiming, “Women WANT to give up control of their life,” and that they only vote, work, or otherwise make decisions because of “the pressure of modern society.”

This wasn’t a one-off, either. Gutfeld recently joined the chorus of right wing voices defending Russell Brand, after the British “comedian” was accused by multiple women of sexual violence and rape. Gutfeld applauded a teacher who got arrested for having sex with a 16-year-old student. And he claimed men only cry because of “substances in the water that reduce testosterone.”

The jokey tone of some of this is there to insulate it from criticism, but Gutfeld isn’t joking. The party of Donald “Grab 'Em By The Pussy” Trump shows no limits in normalizing extremely toxic masculinity and sexual violence. That much is evident in new court filings in the first big test case for the abortion “bounty hunter” law in Texas. The author of the law, former Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell, has so far shown no shame that his client — who is suing his ex-wife’s friends for helping her abort a pregnancy — displays a long history of abusive, controlling behavior. Mitchell shrugged off reports that his client, Marcus Silva, tried to prevent his wife from working and called her names like “slut” and “whore” in front of her coworkers.

So it’s unlikely that Mitchell will mind a new filing providing evidence that Silva threatened to upload sexually explicit videos of his ex-wife, unless she returned home to clean and do laundry for him. Or that he used blackmail methods in an attempt to rape her, saying he would drop the lawsuit if she had sex with him. The document had a transcript of Silva, this latest “hero” of the anti-abortion movement, telling his ex, “You’re just gonna have your fcking life destroyed in every fcking way that you can imagine to where you want to blow your f*cking brains out.”

It’s not surprising that Mitchell would be fine with this treatment of women. As he argued to the Supreme Court in 2021, women have it coming by not “refraining from sexual intercourse.” But now, of course, Mitchell is working for a man whose goal is to force his ex-wife to have sex with him.

One would think, after the political backlash to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, Republicans would not be so eager to advertise how the anti-choice movement is about controlling women and not “life.” But, as David Kirkpatrick of the New Yorker writes, the head of Alliance Defending Freedom, the biggest conservative legal group in the country, was open about how the goal is to destroy access to contraception. “It may be that the day will come when people say the birth-control pill was a mistake,” Alan Sears explained.

What’s notable is this extremism isn’t just relegated to the world of fundamentalist Christianity. The more secular and more proudly fascist right — which is increasingly cossetted and promoted by the tech billionaire world of Elon Musk and his buddies — has been aggressively promoting pseudo-scientific arguments in favor of extreme curtailing of sexual freedom.

The most prominent example is Costin Alamariu, a self-declared fascist who has become an “intellectual” darling on the right for putting a faux-intellectual gloss on some of the most evil impulses of the MAGA movement. He’s been blogging for a long time under the name “Bronze Age Pervert,” which makes him sound fun, but of course, he’s anything but. His book, “Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy,” has become an Amazon bestseller because he’s promoted by the grossest people on the internet. He proposes strict control over human “breeding” on the facetious grounds that it’s necessary for the betterment of humanity, which he mostly understands in extremely racist terms. In his newsletter, John Ganz quotes Alamariu’s writing:

I make the case in this introduction that this same matter of selective breeding, whether sexual selection, or various societies’ management of marriage and reproduction, constitutes the most important part of morality, legislation, or of the “lawgiver’s art,” and that a sharp awareness of this reality is what led, again, to the discovery of the standard of nature and the subsequent birth of philosophy.

As Graeme Wood at the Atlantic pointed out, on his blog, Alamariu dispenses with the faux-academic language for an earthier version of the same arguments. “He considers American cities a ‘wasteland’ run by Jews and Black people, though the words he uses to denote these groups are considerably less genteel than these,” he writes. Christopher Rufo has publicly praised Alamariu.

The sexual weirdness of the MAGA movement is deeply intertwined with the racism and the violence. Alamariu’s writings are just saying the quiet part out loud: Sexual control, especially of women, is largely fueled by notions about “breeding” future generations, especially to look a certain way that racists want them to. Normalizing violence against women is part of that scheme, since, as fascists long have understood, women often don’t go along voluntarily.

Because this is so weird, it’s tempting to ignore it as the chattering of a fringe group of men are still mad they didn’t get laid in college. But that would be a mistake, and not just because some of those men have become wildly powerful:

As the Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court shows, Republicans are never content to keep their massive sexual issues to themselves. They are determined to make everyone else suffer, not only by rolling back reproductive rights but by aggressively normalizing sexual and domestic violence. The throughline here is a belief that women aren’t full human beings, but a sexual resource to be put under male control, by violence if necessary. It’s a view they’re getting increasingly less coy about publicly sharing.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    How long are we, as a society, going to allow shit like this in the name of free speech? Read this shit, listen to it, it is not good shit. It is blatantly evil. I’ve about had it. Shut the fuck up. This isn’t free speech, this is fucking hate speech.

    • paintbucketholder@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      How long are we, as a society, going to allow shit like this in the name of free speech?

      It feels that those nations that experienced the Nazi terror of the Third Reich have a much better idea of what constitutes dangerous speech.

      Allowing this kind of stochastic terrorism out of some misguided notion of “free speech” is just not a good idea.

      • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s the paradox of tolerance:

        Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

        Sir Karl Popper, 1945

    • SuckMyWang@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The part that I can’t understand is they say you can say whatever you want as long as you’re not being physically violent while ignoring the hard fact that everyone has a limit. If someone yells hateful things at you 12 hours a day at some point you need to protect your psyche. It works the other way too in that people who are constantly exposed to hateful ideas in an echo chamber will eventual act on those ideas. This simply isn’t a problem with the other end of the spectrum in that someone surrounded by caring people who teach kindness will never become a threat to anyone.

    • Dienervent@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I’m confused as to which shit you’re referring to. OP’s rant or Trump’s speeches? Either way, if you let someone start controlling which speech is allowed and which is not based on the ideas it contains at a society-wide level, you’ll have created a tyrant. It’s not a good plan.

      • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Similarly, if you allow people to spew hateful diarrhea from their mouths eventually half the country will believe them. I myself, would much rather live in a society that punches people who say women are naturally subservient to men than one that does not. Its not a bad thing to punch shit heads. They’re only so bold and out there with racism/misogyny/anti-semitism because they never suffer the consequences of having their teeth knocked out of their still-moving jowls. Maybe I just need a break, but I am over all these cunts flying their flags proud.

        • Dienervent@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          That’s only because you listen to OP’s nonsense. Meanwhile the trump supporters are in their own echo chambers and thing you’re either a pedo or a pedo defender so you deserve to get punched too.

          The right, especially Trump supporters are dangerous, not because of their “weird sexuality” or misogyny. But because they’re trying to dismantle democracy. Free speech is an essential component of democracy and they’ll go after it the second they get an ounce of power.

          You talk about not wanting to allow hate speech, yet the speech you just read is making you want to punch people. That’s what hate speech looks like.

          • Nougat@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Free speech is not unlimited, and never has been. When your speech infringes upon - or causes to be infringed - someone else’s rights, your speech should be limited. Slander and libel are illegal. When your speech creates an unjustified panic, your speech should be limited. You can’t shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater unless there is a fire. When your speech creates a legitimate threat to someone’s life or limb, it should be limited. You can’t call for the execution of your political enemies when your supporters have demonstrated that they are willing and able to commit violent crimes on your behalf … unless you’re Donald Trump, apparently.

            • Poggervania@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Yup - and honestly, the people who blindly follow people like Trump or the GOP just “to own the libs” and those like Sanctus who say they’d “rather live in a society that punches people who say women are naturally subservient to men than one that does not,” are the same kind of person: the kind of people who want to control the speech of people who say things they don’t like.

              Hate speech, from either side, should not be tolerated. The right tends to say a lot more batshit insane things that are downright vile, and I am deeply sadden that what they say is fucking okay and even cool with others, but that doesn’t give a free pass for people to go “well we should harm them or kill them or something”. Ideally, we would be holding people to a higher standard - especially those in public office - because saying stuff like “women are men’s property”, “maybe Hitler was right”, and “fuck black/hispanic/asian people” is actually hate speech, and that should be called out and have people held accountable for.

          • LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 year ago

            You don’t think that the misogyny talked about in the post is dangerous? Asking for clarification here, but are you openly saying a political ideology promoting misogyny isn’t dangerous?

    • MindSkipperBro12@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      We’ll stop when we can make it where everyone can say what they want and have it magically not affect national politics.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        So… I can go to your neighborhood, knock on every door and tell them all that you’re a pedophile, and face no consequences in your ideal world?

  • BeMoreCareful@lemdro.id
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    1 year ago

    I think one of the things I struggle with is: how much should I be concerned about this?

    Like, it’s wildly concerning, but aren’t these just the same people that always thought this way saying the quiet part out loud?

    I kind of personally feel that it’s the death throws of the more gentrified version of this brand of politics. The women are more family focused, men are goal oriented demographics reflect reality while ignoring systemic issues brand. It’s kindly thought of as old fashioned, but increasingly described as ignorant or unsophisticated.

    It feels more like the violent lashing out of a cornered animal that knows it is about to be lunch.

    The money behind it is worrying, but it feels like these people are kicking and screaming because they’re being dragged forward.

    Idk

    • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Yeah I do agree tbh, people find a weird bit of right wing craziness poking through the wall and panic but the reality is you can find popular republican’s with crazy hateful ideas all through time and in every direction.

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      That won’t stop them from claiming to have the moral upper hand. Fuck these people.