This is What MAGA Manhood Looks Like….. And Young Men Are Watching

First, there’s the bully coming for your friend’s lunch money. Hand it over, loser! That is Trump’s message in demanding $50 billion per year in oil from Venezuela. MAGA men, after all, don’t ask for permission and don’t think they have to pay. That’s for beta men. Extortion and bullying are central to the MAGA manhood playbook.

Then there is the Polymarket bettor who made $400k on the Maduro capture – monetizing and gamifying an act of unlawful intrusion into a sovereign nation that resulted in at least 80 and perhaps 100 dead. Here’s another aspect of MAGA manhood: making a profit on, well, anything, possibly in this case from insider information.

Just a few days later, an ICE agent murders a woman who is fleeing a protest and declare it an act of ‘domestic terrorism’ – and all the officials around the officer who killed her move to justify the death. The agonizing video of this senseless killing unfolds with an ICE officer treating the woman like a target in a video game or like he’s seen too many John Wick movies. Early statements from the Administration are excruciatingly predictable: don’t apologize. Don’t take responsibility for your actions. MAGA men can do no wrong.

Then, there is the classic bully script: choose a scapegoat and keep beating them down. For Trump, it’s Somali immigrants whom he accused in a New York Times interview, of hating America. Somalis are one of the most economically vulnerable and relatively small immigrant communities in the US that have faced challenges in the decades-long armed conflict in their former home country, and Trump seems to delight in haranguing them. Yet another tactic straight from the MAGA manhood playbook: pick on the vulnerable.

Finally, there is the absurdity of the new dietary recommendations from RFK’s HHS: meat, meat and more meat. Real men, after all, eat beef. All other foods are for losers, beta man stuff.

We know this is not the model of manhood the US needs. It is not the model of manhood that most of the US believes in. But it wins votes among some young men, many of whom have felt unseen, unrepresented and uncared for by previous administrations. What we desperately need is to listen to, speak to and respond to the economic and social precarity that many young men in the US are facing and show them that Trump’s version of performative masculinity and MAGA manhood is self-serving – and will not put money in their pockets or improve their lives or those of their loved ones.

We need to brave enough to call out the harm, as Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey did. Bullies and thugs will continue to prevail if we don’t. Silence enables the worst of MAGA manhood. And young men are watching.

Help stop the spread of violent and extremist versions of manhood.
Equimundo works with young men and boys to prevent violence, challenge extremist narratives, and advance gender justice by promoting expansive masculinities. This work is essential, and it depends on people who refuse to stay silent.
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