By David Futrelle
A specter is haunting the IncelsWithoutHate subreddit, a specter who calls himself leftexincel, and he’s bringing with him the glorious science of Marxism.
Leftexincel, a former incel who now boasts that he’s had “a couple of girlfriends” whom he’s “had sex with on multiple occasions” showed up on Reddit’s main hangout for supposedly non-hateful incels last week to warn them of the dangers of losing their true selves in what he sees as a pointless quest “to obtain what is today arguably the most important form of social capital, a female companion … .”
The weird thing is that he kind of, sort of, has a point, or at least half of one. But in the end the small bits of truth in his critique become buried underneath a pile of bullshit. The problems isn’t really his turgid Marxist language — though this doesn’t help — but rather his lingering hatred of both himself and the women he’s apparently convinced to date him.
Leftexincel introduces himself as a “by no means very attractive” twentysomething who,
with an inhuman amount of effort, [has] ‘ascended’ to being a normie, with my own day job’s income and place, a halfway finished BA at a university, a couple of girlfriends (none higher than a ‘4’) and a current girlfriend I’ve had sex with on multiple occasions (also probably no higher than a ‘4’ or maybe ‘4.5’ if I asked the layman), all met at work and school.
Despite his newly-won status as a “normie,” and what he correctly calls “the ‘reactionary’ character of the online incel community,” leftexincel informs the IncelsWithoutHate crowd that
I highly sympathize with it and believe that it is the product of legitimate structural failures of modernity against men and that the cause lies in the increased social demand to be more than just an authentic individual and partner to a woman, but a full ‘product’ that needs to be valorizable as more than a partner but as a commodity and status object in general.
Here leftexincel is basically reiterating the old critique, articulated perhaps most clearly by sociologist David Riesman in the 1950s, that modern capitalism has transformed people from “inner-directed” characters, living according to moral codes, to “other directed” personalities more concerned with impressing others and fitting in. Back in the 50s, cultural critics complained about other-directed up-and-comers trying to curry favor by glad-handing at the office and holding well-attended dinner parties; today, the critics lament all those wannabe influencers building their brands on Instagram.
But leftexincel quickly loses the plot, insisting that, in our excessively materialistic world, money not only can buy you love but that you really can’t find love without it.
With the decline of old rigid patriarchal structures this subjectivity in relations has opened up but in a world where, increasingly, value must come from socioeconomic status, which can primarily be sold materially in the form of: disposable income or other forms of capital, a conformed physical appearance and outwardly matching confidence and (sexually enticing) personality; all elements that improve one’s ability to sell oneself and acquire the means to purchase others.
Never mind that most poor people the world over end up finding love — and that some rich people never do.
Attraction is a financial transaction exchanged for either financial or social capital, and one must have both or be able to acquire either one with the other to succeed in obtaining intimacy.
Bullshit.
I strongly believe that ‘neurodivergent’ incels in reality fail to find intimacy because they would never want to sacrifice their authenticity for conformity, and that this is then communicated through a resentment of the object of desire (an authentic female companionship).
Close, but very much not it. He’s right about the resentment part, but he doesn’t realize how poisonous the incels; “authentic” selves are to begin with. To put it in Reisman’s terms: While excessive other-direction is both phony and manipulative and in the end rather shallow, incels tend to embrace a reductive form of inner direction, castigating women for not seeing their supposed sterling inner qualities and focusing instead on their supposedly sub-par physical features. What incels don’t realize, of course, is that the toxic attitudes they exude are the real turn-off, not their allegedly inferior bone structure.
Now leftexincel wants these resentful dudes to know that they won’t be happy even if they do finally manage, like him, to “ascend.”
I’m not much happier now that I’ve improved myself, but in effect that is the real problem: anyone can ‘ascend’ if they truly try hard enough, but it will never really fulfill any real needs … .
Well it won’t if you have that attitude, mister!
So why doesn’t leftexincel believe in life after love? (Sorry, Cher.) Is it because the relationships he’s stumbled into so far haven’t lived up his exaggerated hopes? Or that they were objectively shitty relationships? Is he resentful that the women he’s dated haven’t been as “hot” as he would like? That’s got to be at least part of it, given that he managed to bring up their allegedly worse-than-average looks of his various girlfriends twice in a single sentence.
Leftexincel follows this dispiriting take on love with the least-inspiring utopian vision I’ve seen in a long time:
My ideal would not so much be a world in which society itself coerces women to (once more) conform to being the guaranteed other to men (enforced monogamy, arranged marriage, social division in sex, etc.) … but rather a world in which propertied social capital is an impossibility and … sex and romance is then reduced purely to its own, non-vital element of life.
Well that’s rather depressing. There are people who live happy lives without sex or romance — because they honestly don’t desire those things. It’s considerably less healthy to abandon such things because you’ve basically given up in despair.
Essentially this means that for all intents and purposes incels are right about the present state of things, and do identify a problem, and are right when saying that, objectively, when one is an incel, there is little more to do than try to ‘looksmaxx’ or whatever oneself to be as close to a ‘normie’ as possible. And likewise I share the agreement that this is a decrepit state for a society to be in.
I’ll give him points for at least recognizing that returning to patriarchy would be both impossible and a bad thing for women. But I don’t think he’s going to win over many incels — or anyone else, for that matter — by proclaiming that the world sucks and love is an illusion and there’s pretty much noting we can do about it.
His message certainly didn’t win him many fans in the IncelsWithoutHate subreddit. One regular proclaimed that he’d
rather work my ass off and save some money so that I can finally go to Eastern Europe or Thailand on a sex vacation, and cope by indulging in all of my perverted fantasies, than live at the mercy of a benevolent communist state that would pretend to take care of all my material needs, in exchange for conformity of thought and abandoning my personal freedom … .
Another complained that under communism
the same Chad who used to bully us will be able to use his charisma to get elevated into Comrade Chad, worker’s council representative and valuable member of the party .. .
Meet the new Chad. Same as the old Chad.
For what it’s worth, leftexincel insists that the “the violent power fantasies” of Stalinists and other totalitarian communists
are just re-imaginings of their own particular resentment through a modern lens.
As far as he’s concerned,
any hypothetical future communism is guaranteed to have nothing to do with historical Stalinism in the slightest … .
But let’s set all that aside for the moment. Because in the end what undermines leftexincel’s critique isn’t so much its Marxism, which is somewhat attenuated to begin with. It’s that, to paraphrase his own rhetoric, leftexincel’s new science of Marxism-Incelism is basically little more than a re-imagining of the same old incel resentment through a quasi-Marxist lens. And that’s not very revolutionary at all.
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Depending on what “propertied social capital” is, I’m not sure I disagree with this. I mean, so far in human history, any time something is considered property it is also assumed to have value, and if something has value then the rich and powerful both have better access to it and control access of it.
I could be wrong, my world socioeconomic history education is nonexistent.
Coincidentally my news feed spat out an article today about Japanese Marxist incels:
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/japanese-incels-marxist-revolution-kakumeiteki-himote
I’m a little impaired and a little messed up so all I can say is Incels, grow up enough to develop real problems instead of becoming a real problem for everyone else.
I’m personal friends with actual Marxists, dyed in the wool communists.
And my marxist friends think incels are shit and their ideas are basically fascist.
They also happen to think Mr. Leftexincel is basically a less pleasant version of Mr. Hanky the Christmas poo.
Let me guess: an incel somewhere saw the line “Each according to their need” and went “Hey! That applies! I need sex with women!”
Alas, they are quite incapable of realizing that women feel an even stronger need not to have sex with them. And I assume that stronger needs trump* lesser ones, so…
* I really wish there was another word for that.
Random question that you should feel free to ignore if you’d like: have you spent any amount of time combing through the IncelsWithoutHate archives? How are they doing on that whole “non-hateful” score? I’m just vaguely curious.
@Rabid Rabbit:
Let me guess: somewhere in there is the assumption that pussy–defined as a resource–ought to be communal property rather than selfishly hoarded by the person it happens to be part of?
The “social demand to be more than just an authentic individual and partner to a woman, but a full ‘product’ that needs to be valorizable as more than a partner but as a commodity and status object in general”
Without the “partner to a woman” bit, this is exactly what women have been complaining about for centuries.
Welcome to hell?
@Aaron: I spent a few perusing that subreddit. Didn’t take long to find hate. More of the “polite” or “benevolent” sexism than the outright frothing-at-the-mouth mass-murderer kind, but in my books it’s just as bad because the latter legitimises and cultivates the former.
“Civility” politics can go burn in a fucking fire for all it’s worth.
@Full Metal Ox:
Until they get access to it, at which point it becomes theirs and no other man’d better try to get it on with that slut. Immediate shift from pseudo-communism to raging defence of private property, but you have to remember that the resource of pussy does not actually belong to the person it’s attached to.
You date women that won’t make other men envy you?
Damn. Why do you even date at all.
“but rather a world in which propertied social capital is an impossibility and … sex and romance is then reduced purely to its own, non-vital element of life.”
It´s hard to say what this means, and if it makes sense or not. Sounds like he is saying incels does not suffer mostly because of lack of romance and sex as such but because they fail to fullfill societys expectations of a successfull life and with communism that would no longer be the case.
It is rather contradictory though that he ranks women with a number because that seems like a very market capitalist influenced way of thinking.
I think this guy has read too much Foucault. I did, too, when I was his age, without having any context for it. At least he’s reading and thinking.
Woke incels: OMG! We are so trapped in the belly of a horrible machine! And the machine is bleeding to death¹!!
Also woke incels: But women are still ratable on a totes objective 1-10 scale, just so you know
¹ Thank you, Godspeed You! Black Emperor ?
You don’t say.
https://despair.com/products/love
Money can’t buy you love. But it can buy exotic cars and luxury yachts. Once you’ve got those covered, you’ll be fighting love off with a stick.
@Jane Doe
I’m not sure I disagree with it either, if applied properly. If by making “owning propertied social capital an impossibility” means that we, as a society, stop attaching value to a particular set of inherent aptitudes and skills, whilst devaluating, mocking, discouraging and flat out prohibiting other not-so-common inherent aptitudes and skills, then I’m all for it.
Neurodivergents, introverts and the likes come to mind here. Standard traits and behaviors tend to be cast in a positive light, whereas deviations from that standard tend to be cast as undesirable and evil. Even in media the villain is often portrayed by someone who is disabled, mentally ill or a member of a minority, whereas the hero is portrayed by someone representing the standard or “normalcy” if you will. Whereas, as we know, people are more likely to be the victims than the “villains”.
But of course marxist-incel doesn’t mean it that way because he hasn’t realized that Left-wing positions hinge upon subverting or flat out abolishing hierarchies. No, he thinks the only hierarchies that should ever be abolished are the ones that explicitly exclude him. Like many right wingers, something is not a problem until it affects them personally. So he’s happy to abolish the hierarchies that affect him, whilst keeping and establishing new hierarchies that benefit him personally, whilst screwing over half of the population.
Aww, look. He wrote a Valentine’s card for his girlfriend. So sweet.
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
You’re not really attractive enough to be worth dating,
But I like that we’ve had sex on multiple occasions.
Just on the topic of the post… I’m finding it hard to believe this guy is sincere in this sentiment:
…when he clearly is invested in that social capital given he’s still rating his girlfriends on the 0-10 scale.
This paragraph took the cake for me:
You know what this actually made me think of? It made me think of two things: Szechuan-gate and Ready Player One. It’s the same dynamic at play: they’d sooner watch the world crumble around them while indulging in inauthentic nostalgia fantasy than actually take on the system that has robbed them of any stability, let alone upward mobility. In what other world would thousands of people mob fast food restaurants for a condiment giveaway they were too young to remember in the first place because a cartoon man said so? RPO had the same dynamic; the protagonist didn’t actually remember the 80s, he just wanted to live vicariously through the nostalgia of the creator of his fantasy world, which was his escape from the godawful real world around him, a real world that is still shit at the end of the story.
This is what they think “personal freedom” is: indulging in their little fantasy worlds, be it szechuan sauce or exploiting citizens of third-world countries for sex, because if the real world is going to turn to shit, the least it can do is sell me a fantasy world in its place while it does it.
God, it’s such a sad thought. So I went on a real nostalgia journey and found this YouTube upload of an old VHS tape I had of children’s entertainer Eric Nagler making music with household instruments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-rHk6HOjjY
Man, that guy can play a mean set of spoons. The jaw harp stuck in my memory as well.
Sort of? If a person doesn’t have a means of obtaining enough income to maintain themselves and expect their partner to take care of them while offering nothing in exchange, they aren’t much of a partner.
Sort of not. It’s not a matter of how much cash you have as what value you add. Are the resources (not necessarily financial) you’re offering worth the effort you require from the other person? I think a big piece of what these guys are missing is that relationships take work. Relationships with THEM take work on the part of the other person. If they’re not offering anything, why put up with them.
Again, have they tried not being horrible? (I feel like I should make that my signature line.)
Does anyone remember the troll we had who dumped his girlfriend even he liked her and they had great sex because she wasn’t hot enough. He was waiting for his grandparents to die to inherit their money which he would use to attract a trophy wife, but if he couldn’t find a hot wife, he said he would kill himself? Then he complained about how women are shallow for wanting to live in a furnished house.
I wonder if this is the same guy.
It’s so fascinating to watch this one. He’s recognized that commodification of our relationships is bad, but doesn’t even realize that he’s still doing it.
Like, that’s why you’ve been unsatisfied in your relationships, dude. You’re still gauging her on a 1-10 scale, and she can tell. Because you don’t want a relationship, you want the appearance of one, because you think society expects it of you.
I need to watch Ready Player One. With a bottle of rum and a pen and notepad.
EDIT: WWTH, wow, a real star, there. Doesn’t ring a bell, may have been before my time. Pretty incredible.
@WWTH
Wow. That sounds so oddly specific I wouldn’t be surprised if you were tasked with keeping a record file of all the trolls that have gone through this blog, with a whole cabinet dedicated to Seagull and his many aliases.
That being said, the actual fuck? Who does this? Sort of telling from this, and other comments, that what these people value is not the relationship itself, or even the control they may exert upon other people’s lives, but the societal status gained from achieving said relationship.
I am oddly reminded of “The Wolf of Wall Street”, where DiCaprio’s character dumps his wife for a more conventionally attractive one. Also, didn’t Bezzos, Musk and others pull the same trick before?
It’s almost as if that whole thing with women being shallow and wanting the popular jock, whilst passing over “nice guys” is entirely projection from people who would dump any woman they share common goals and interests with, over a horrible person with the body of a supermodel.
@Scildfreja
Thank you for your services. We anticipate your thoughts on the matter, and will reciprocate with as many cat videos and pony gifs as required.
@ Viscaria:
The creepiness of ranking women numerically by attractiveness aside, I’m also boggling at the pomposity of
“An average sucker might think she’s a 4.5, but I, an intellectual, can judge more accurately, and she’s merely a 4.”
Ah yes. Remember good old Chad Brezhnev? There was also Chad Khrushchev, Chad Andropov, even Chad Stalin.
Chad Stalin seizes all the Soviet Stacies!