It’s just a few weeks since a young professional at a noisy party tried to explain why a huge swathe of Americans will vote for Donald Trump. Had I heard of the Kill Tony podcast? It’s one of the biggest podcasts in the world, he said; amateur comedians enter their names in a bucket and are selected at random to perform for one minute, after which comedian Tony Hinchcliffe and assorted celebrities judge the performances.
The result can be funny if a bit uncomfortable because nothing and no one is off-limits, said my friend. But his overarching point was that Kill Tony’s massive following consists entirely of young men. The attraction is that others are saying out loud what they really think about women and race while giving the ordinary Joes a chance to participate in the maul. In short, these are the boys who are sick of having their freedoms taken and it’s all the fault of the Kamala liberals.
My friend was unable to explain why the same men are refusing to support young women whose bodily autonomy, health and freedoms are genuinely threatened by Trump’s GOP.
The next I heard of Kill Tony was last Sunday night when Hinchcliffe appeared as a warm-up act at the Trump rally in Madison Square Garden and, among many soft targets, described Puerto Rico as “literally a floating island of garbage”.
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Trump didn’t invent the manosphere, the stinking corner of the internet committed to dispatching women back to the Stone Age, but he amplified its most poisonous voices and fuelled its worst instincts
Other official speakers told the 20,000-strong crowd that Hillary Clinton was “a sick son of a bitch ... the whole f**king party, a bunch of degenerates”, called Harris “the anti-Christ” and “the devil” and warned that “her pimp-handlers will destroy our country”. But it was the “island of garbage” remark that cut through – so much so that the Trump campaign was obliged to say that the joke did not reflect the views of candidate or campaign.
When the Democrat vice-presidential candidate Governor Tim Walz challenged Hinchcliffe about it on social media the comedian inevitably accused his critics of lacking a sense of humour, and in a reference to Walz’s law mandating free menstruation products in school toilets, added: “I’m a comedian Tim ... might be time to change your tampon.” Trumpites love that tampon joke – they broke into a “Tampon Tim” chant when Walz was mentioned at the rally – presumably because they still snigger about girls and periods.
Some US-based friends concluded happily that Trump had definitely lost the Puerto Rican vote (half a million in Pennsylvania alone) and logged out. But the whole effort seemed far more considered and darker than that. The apparent misfires didn’t feel like a mistake; as the foul language, insults and aggression ratcheted up, they felt more like a focused strategy designed to stoke anger and violence in preparation for another bout of election denialism. Some sketchy polls putting Trump well ahead of Harris have all the appearances of a set-up for Stop the Steal 2.0.
And for that Trump needs male cannon fodder, such as the young working-class men who have drifted away from the Democrats. That’s why Tony Hinchcliffe was there on Sunday.
The party knew his form. During a stand-up set in 2021 Hinchcliffe was videotaped insulting an Asian American comedian appearing on the same show, calling him a “filthy little f**king ch**k” followed by various Asian stereotypes in a mock Chinese accent. It went viral on the internet.
When commentators claim glibly that Trump’s one term was never as catastrophic as adversaries predicted, they presumably avert their gaze from the staunch individuals around him who stopped the worst of his reckless tendencies. But no one was capable of softening his catastrophic effect on decency and social norms.
He didn’t invent the manosphere, the stinking corner of the internet committed to dispatching women back to the Stone Age, but he amplified its most poisonous voices and fuelled its worst instincts, such as the jokes about a black presidential candidate performing blow-jobs to advance her career; his suggestion that she would be “like a play toy” for world leaders if elected, or his sleazy paeon to Arnold Palmer’s penis.
He has called Harris “dumb” and “stupid” on- and offline and tolerated, if not openly approved, the Trump T-shirts with the message “Say No to the Hoe” (“hoe” meaning whore). Parents are reportedly buying them for their teenage daughters. A man wearing a “Joe and Hoe Gotta Go” version tells a reporter that it’s a joke of course.
The hypermasculine catnip of the far-right is not new either, but this latest version is Trump-powered. The pair given the honour of bringing him onstage at the GOP convention were the president of the UFC and Hulk Hogan. Hogan was there again on Sunday ripping his clothes off.
While boys and men are drowning in pornography and messaging that tells them the only worthwhile female qualities are sexual desirability and submission – a mindset that maps neatly on to Trump’s disinhibited, reptilian blurts – Tucker Carlson uses a Trump rally to compare the US to a hormone-addled teenage girl who needs a “vigorous spanking” from her “pissed” dad. The rant neatly crystallised that stunted sexuality-control-revenge-porno combination that seems to infuse many conservative provocateurs.
These are the ones who got their political awakening on far-right sites majoring in “ironic” racism and misogyny. The idea of tough Daddy Trump putting the addled little woman in her place resonated with the crowd. “Daddy’s home,” they screamed.
The sad truth for young American men is that another Trump term is the worst thing that could happen for them, for society and the world. Yet they and the Kill Tonys may hold our fate in their hands.