Welcome to the era of cringe fascism
How Italy's media fascism differs from the fascism being ushered in by the broligarchy in the US. Also, some tips on how you can push back against the onslaught of bullshit
On the very first day of Trump’s second presidency, first buddy and 12-figure billionaire Elon Musk decided it was the right time to throw up a Roman (nazi) salute.1 Regardless of the intent or the “misunderstanding” of his gesture, the far-right definitely saw it for what it was. Musk’s act also provides a test on how we’ll react to similar events over the coming weeks and months (hint: things aren’t boding well). It also makes it fairly clear that we’re not entering a type of media fascism that defined Trump’s first term, we’re entering cringe fascism, led by a group of broligarchs who happen to be some of the most thin-skinned billionaires on earth.
For years I believed the US was primed for a media fascism similar to Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy of the 2000s and 2010s where, to paraphrase Neil Postman, people are entertained to death. However, unlike Trump, Berlusconi actually owned several of the big television networks and the largest publishing house in the country; Trump is just on tv. Media fascism is rule by media and Berlusconi’s power and influence can be seen in really good 2009 documentary called Videocracy by Erik Gandini.2 In the film, Gandini profiles a young man named Ricky who wishes he could achieve his dream of being on television - “the television of the president.” Throughout the film, we listen to Ricky constantly gripe about how easy it is for women to get on television, leaving him to feel disenfranchised from the system. Ricky never truly understands that women get these opportunities because they can be cast onscreen as “velina” girls, a fairly exploitative role similar to a showgirl.
The term velina comes from the name of press releases from Mussolini’s Ministry of Culture but shifted in the late 1980s to refer to women who dance on screen next to newscasters or when shows go to commercial break. (Think of those 1960s-esque interstitials in Austin Powers but way more provocative.) Italy could be fairly obsessed with (traditional) television media along and along with a high unemployment rate, getting a job on screen is goals. However, for the average guy it was nearly impossible to be recognized by an agent or cast as on-screen talent. To explain this, the film features Berlusconi’s friend, entertainment agent Lele Mora who tells Gandini how important it is that he signs Italy’s version of alpha males. Mora is an open fascist sympathizer who dresses in all white and has Mussolini’s march music as his ringtone. (It comes off as creepy as you imagine.)
In the film, Ricky is portrayed as hapless and cringe. He lives at home with his mom, plays with nunchuks in his room, does Karate in the front yard, sings Ricky Martin covers, and attends live tv show tapings hoping to appear on camera. He is what we may have called a “beta male.”3 Ricky is the polar opposite of the film’s other main character, paparazzo (now grustle bro) Fabrizio Corona, depicted as the alpha male in the film (Corona is featured in an extended full frontal nudity scene). And funny enough, the men in the film, Ricky, Fabrizio, Lele, and Silvio sort of represent that stupid “hard times make create strong men” matrix meme and Gandini lays on the historical mirrors to Mussolini’s fascism pretty thick.
However, over here in the US, the Rickys are now in charge. They managed to gain their power because they own the media systems, not the president. The broligarchs here aren’t earnest or confused like Ricky, they’re vindictive, cruel, self-centered and looking for retribution, and their establishing their own form of fascism. These CEOs launder your user data into their wealth, spending that money in hopes they may bend the government to their capitalist satisfaction. These men have grown up with us, starting out as hapless programmers, struggling to get women or find fame or friends, but then used their wealth to simply buy popularity. But you can take the boy out of cringe but you can’t take the cringe out of the boy.
Just look at the (stupid) controversy around Musk’s alleged gaming talents. He wants to be one of the online gamers so bad that he seems to have lied about being at the top of the leaderboards of two very time consuming games. After getting caught on a stream barely knowing how to play the game he’s supposedly an expert at, it seemed he was having (paying?) someone help him level up. Musk, as he is wont to do, lashed out at his detractors. But how pathetic do you have to be fight for this, like who gives a shit? But when you need to keep your online fans (boys) happy, you’ll do anything.4
Zuck, for all his worth, seems to have actually invested in some alpha stuff like MMA training, but his awkward use of culture war terms and ill fitting broclothes reveal the cringe boy underneath.
It’s worth revisiting the scene in David Fincher’s The Social Network where Jesse Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg codes the minsogynst Facesmash (the precursor to Facebook). The scene intercuts between the angry, dejected and drunk Zuckerberg in his dorm room coding with party scenes from the Finals clubs (frats) rush events. Fincher directed the dark scene to show that Zuck is updating traditional misogyny with digital misogyny, one that uses so much data it shuts down the servers at Harvard. The Zuckerberg character celebrates his success of crashing the servers with no care whatsoever for the hundreds of girls he hurt that night.
And we shouldn’t be surprised how this all turned out. This current situation is the outcome of over 20 years of this institutional development. These boys aged along with the machines and companies they built. But unlike television, a one way medium, their technologies could scale but they need people for their profit. Therefore, their systems are also a massive audience capture apparatus since the users help define the space and influence the owners. As a result, these boys became obsessed with the culture that supports them, not the a culture that supports others.
The Beta Male’s Charms
In Stephanie Rosenbloom’s 2008 New York Times article “The Beta Male’s Charms” (still possibly one of the best article titles ever), Rosenbloom profiles the creators of the popular 2006 webseries We Need Girlfriends and writer Steven Tsapelas tells her:
“At the time we were watching ‘Entourage’ a lot,” Mr. Tsapelas said. “And ‘Entourage,’ you know, these guys go through their daily situations in life and just pick up women constantly. And for us it was like the complete opposite. Everything was a struggle.”
And absolutely not to pick on Steven because he was expressing an emotion that was shared among thousands of young men who felt disenfranchised from the dating scene, from jobs, and by the media. In YouTube’s early days, creators flocked to the platform because they were tired of the mainstream systems glorifying the alpha males and anti-heroes and excluding stories of their struggles. YouTube was a place for them to broadcast it themselves. In those days, there was also this constant drumbeat refrain coming from the creators that they were “pushing back” against the “gatekeepers” of media production. The CEOs of the platforms defeated the gatekeepers on the creators behalf by becoming the gatekeepers.
And although YouTube was an accessible new media system, many of the earliest vlogs and webseries seemed to be reproducing some of the well-worn traits of traditional media from aesthetics to exclusivity. And aside from some incredible standouts like Issa Rae or Franchesca Ramsey, the majority of popular webseries and vlogs featured white people and only slightly risky storylines - in other words, their struggles were kind of banal. Shows like We Need Girlfriends, Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager, The Guild, and Joss Whedon’s writer’s-strike-fan-service show Dr Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog weren’t really web television so much as they were television on the web. Without them, there is no MrBeast.
Later, as the platforms aged, these so-called beta males folded their attitudes, ideologies and their reactionary beliefs into the system, turning m’lady cringe into infrastructure. Then, as it’s been noted SO many times, alternative and far-right media took notice. Whereas the mainstream television media continued down its path of liberal audience media service, online was the space for “freedom of expression.” It was there, that instead of squashing the harassment campaigns and cruelty of Gamergate and shaming it out of existence, it became the second floor of our digital skyscrapers.
And so here we are, where YouTubers and podcasters have managed to launder conservative and far-right ideologies into the mainstream because they want to be the “internet of the president.” Cringe fascism is scarier than media fascism because in media fascism, there is still order in the chaos. In cringe fascism, the chaos runs the order. You can see how cruel it can get by seeing how Musk has handled the fallout from his salute. Later the same day, the Anti-Defamation League, once Elon’s enemy, sided with him, claiming the salute was “awkward” (cringe coded). However, in the days following, Musk continued to make jokes about the holocaust until the ADL told him to stop. Cringe fascism asserts its irony and “just joking” antagonism scattershot onto everyone.
As Ryan Broderick writes in Garbage Day, the US is a country where discourse (online content) operates as governance. The president is going to be guided by these pathetic men who will enable him to create a country with “laws as swift and disposable as tweets, generating discourse that feeds back into the online platforms owned by all the billionaires that just swore allegiance to him. A perpetual motion machine of bull shit. Full stack Trumpism.”
But all is not lost - You can push back
As these full grown men battle reality to be the imagined alpha males of their dreams, we need to be aware of their methods of cruelty. With X and FB loosening restrictions on trust and safety, the window of harm will grow. This may result in platforms expressing a false and siloed version of reality that may inform the president of how to act. The data will make it seem as though nearly 100% of his constituents agree with him as these CEOs purge or censor opposing views.
So what you can do is act locally. I don’t just mean that in terms of getting outside, meeting your neighbors, and finding common ground (though you should do that), I mean create things. Write blogs, do art, make sculpture, craft, whatever, just so long as you are doing it away from the miasma. Mean and monocultural platforms don’t do well without contrast, so take your work to another place.
Second, whenever you can, add context to the chaos. We are living in a time of context collapse and hypermedia; information isn’t gone, it’s just flattened. Help others, especially young people, understand why things work and how they can be part of the world.
Third, help those who are struggling with their identity. One of the most wonderful parts of social media is its ability to provide space for people to discover who they are. This is why I am consistently against the moral panic behavior of blaming and banning social media because it takes a very privileged view of the internet.5 Millions of people are learning who they are in real time and think they’re alone and they are not - the internet can be a place of real growth and discovery. If someone is vulnerable (identity, health, gender, ability) and you have the ability to support their journey, see how they’re doing.
And finally, do not let it get to you. You will be overwhelmed. The goal of any type of fascism it to wear you down. Do not let it. Selectively choose what you should focus on and what you can act on. Again, think locally.
And one last note. Be who you are. Cringe isn’t inherently evil, sometimes it’s just human. Being awkward is being human. It’s when you put aside caring about anyone else and put their safety and wellbeing aside for your insatiable greed of profit it gets super fucked up. When you can’t stop being mean because you don’t know when or how you crossed the line it is not good.
As Sorkin wrote in The Social Network when Mara Rooney’s Erica Albright tells Jesse Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg why she broke up with him: “You’re gonna go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a nerd. And I want you to know from the bottom of my heard that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole.”
As always, stay vigilant, be curious, and persist.
New Media Homework is a newsletter that takes a critical internet literacy approach to online media and culture. It comes up when I have time to write it. Thank you for reading! Feel free to share and tell others to subscribe.
To be clear, if you have to ask the question, you already know the answer. Also, while it’s called a Roman salute, it was popularized by Mussolini, not really used in Ancient Rome. Same with the letters SPQR. Sure they defined ancient Rome’s structure of civics, but the use of the iconic SPQR was Mussolini’s as well. When you see these symbols today, they are connected to 20th century fascism, not ancient Rome.
New Media Homework: You can watch Videocracy (2009) by Erik Gandini on Kanopy with your library card. The film really explains how intertwined how fascism worked and how powerful Berlusconi’s media empire was. I’ve been showing this film to my students for years and by the end of the film, they’re usually sitting there quiet, seemingly full of a bit of dread.
This term is now weaponized but I want to note here that my use of alpha and beta males is purely referential. These terms are all inventions. Being a geeky kid in your room and singing Ricky Martin is fine. You do you. This entire piece is in the context of the broligarchy introducing cringe fascism.
It is absolutely worth subscribing to the QAA podcast so you can hear the episode on this aptly titled “Elon’s Crusty Gamer Sock.”
Haidt has no home here.