Why are you so obsessed with me?

The weeks go by, the seasons change, but some things stay the same.

One of the fixed points in my still-shifting world is a man named Oliver Bateman, a man with what can only be described as a fixation on the dangers of toxic masculinity. When he’s not mocking the “cult” of Crossfit, Tucker Carlson or Andrew Tate, he likes to write about a dangerous group of “gnostic bodybuilders” who use the wisdom of golden age greats like Vince Gironda to seek a modern version of The Cathar doctrine of perfectionism, and spread their gospel anonymously on Twitter. I am one of them, or so they tell me.

Yesterday Bateman posted another article about me and my friends. Mainly, this one was about the mysterious Romanian Yale graduate Costin Alamariu, who many believe to be the even more mysterious leader or, dare I say it, philosopher-king of the Gnostic Bodybuilders, the pervert of the Bronze Age, author of Bronze Age mentality.

According to Bateman, the recent massive success of Alamariu’s self-published book Selective breeding and the birth of philosophy it puts anonymous figures in the perverse mold of the Bronze Age—for that is who Bateman supposes to be Alamariu, though I see no reason to believe it to be so—in a somewhat difficult position. Do Bodybuilders Anonymous follow their leader and reveal themselves? a lot? Or do they continue to operate from the dark, behind the increasingly worn cloak of Internet anonymity?

Bateman briefly ponders whether I’m now weighing the odds of “doing an Alamariu” myself. This author’s answer is… wait and see. Bateman also asks if my friend Peachy Keenan will do the same, clearly unaware that Peachy has already revealed herself to the general public, aptly choosing Fox to do so. Watch his appearance and you will succeed.

This Bateman guy has written about Gnostic bodybuilders, and about me, several times before, as I say, mostly for UnHerd. In one of the pieces, compared me to Kanye West, who was going through a very public meltdown at the time, and suggested that by courting the world’s most famous rapper and the world’s most famous Gnostic bodybuilder, Fox was “playing a dangerous game” . End the piece with a warning.

In the cases of Ye and the REN, it is clear that Fox News and Carlson are only presenting a sanitized and partial story of some of the people they use to get attention. They’re trying to be edgy, but that edge isn’t particularly sharp. It’s the no-nonsense but lucrative work of marketing, and while it can generate ratings or streaming subscriptions, it’s deceptive because people can end up attracted or repelled by ideas they don’t have all the information they need. Carlson’s team wants viewers to see Ye and REN as one-eyed studs in the middle of the show’s “based” banter of pranksters, but those of us who have seen the other side of their faces know better

Bateman knows me better, you see. Based on which handful of others accounts on Twitter and in interviews have said Bateman has been able to “see the other side of my face”. “Conventionally racist, misogynist” is how he describes the other half, noting in passing how another of his bugbears, Zero HP Lovecraft, claimed that “different races are different species”. If I’m conventionally racist, Bateman conveniently ignores the fact that one of my heroes, Vince Gironda, was Italian.

I’ve been trying to figure out Bateman’s obsession with online law, and particularly anonymous online law, for some time. Then someone sent me a piece that Bateman wrote in 2016 and it all started to make sense.

Now, I’m not a fan of armchair psychology. I attacked it a piece I wrote for American mind, in which he discussed the “small penis theory of history” and other such “theories” that attempt to turn all male forms of exertion into an extension (ahem!) of penile anxiety. Here’s what I said about it.

There are many variations on this trend. A well-known one should be the “small penis” theory of history – a dinner party favorite – in which the main motivation for the pursuit of power is, you guessed it, having a small penis. Napoleon and Hitler have been the subject of endless penile speculation. In recent years, following the Stormy Daniels affair, Donald Trump has also been the subject of such speculation, whose “tiny hands” became a source of great hilarity. Putin is also said to have a small penis. These theories are more or less infinitely malleable and endlessly self-confirming. Men, who likes guns? small penises Guys, who drives a 4×4? small penises And so it goes on and on and on.

There is a deep tendency in Western thought to reduce everything to a single organizing principle. sex not at all Economy Class struggle, and so on. It’s understandable, but it’s also rude and stupid, and it reveals as much about the person doing it as the phenomenon in question, if nothing else.

So, before I go any further, let me say that I don’t think everyone who deals with “toxic masculinity,” male or female, has a problem with their father. Some can do it. Others don’t. Bateman, however, definitely does. Look, he says so himself!

On November 7, 2016, Bateman posted a piece about his father on the website Subject matter. “My Father, Donald Trump,” is the title. Maybe you can see where this is going. If you can’t, here’s the first paragraph.

Donald Trump scares a lot of people, but he’s never scared me. I’m vaccinated against men like him. Most people, decent people with good hearts, listen to Trump and their stomachs turn. I listen to Trump and all I hear is a death rattle. I know how men like him end up. I’m over that kind of toxic masculinity. I had to survive my father, a petty thief who gambled for millions the way Trump gambles for billions.

What follows is an agonizing examination of Bateman père’s failures as a father and as a man, despite the fact that he was, for all intents and purposes, the archetypal man: a great popular Chad. Even a gigachad.

I used to admire my father. His name was Tom Bateman, and for a time he was as big as the whole world. It was built like a refrigerator. He was the man, the dragon, the alpha. He was a former college football star and successful businessman who had all the answers. He flew planes, recovered cars and had numerous firearms. No one messed with him, no one answered him and no one told him what to do. He was an irresistible force that won every fight, because he punched every enemy.

Then one day Tom Bateman had an epiphany in his motel room, saw a bright white light and heard a Welsh female voice speaking to him. He quickly lost his shit, Nicholas Cage style. He left his lucrative car dealership. He declared that he would never work again. He grew a ponytail and disappeared into the Pacific Northwest.

Oliver Bateman was a teenager when all this happened, and over the following decades, his father would send him “tens of thousands” of strange gnomish emails, many of which were never opened. Here is one of them.

Crikey.

I’ll let Oliver continue the story:

One after the other, non-apology ramblings were sent. He didn’t believe in apologizing, “because if you did, you had to mean it.” However, he began to change his tone. He began to assure me that he had “no regrets… except everyone.”

And what did he have to complain about? Of course, he had abused me and my mother. He beat us black and blue. She concocted a scheme that led to her being indicted by a grand jury on child abuse charges. The case made national news. I was called to testify against her, reciting outrageous claims he had made up. I was 14 years old.

He stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from those closest to him, including us. Sometimes the scams were big and blatant, like when he decided to stay married to his dying first wife for seven years after he moved in with my mom, just to collect a bunch of life insurance payments on time limit. And sometimes they were pathetic, like when he talked me into giving him the $1,500 I’d earned from my first job, ostensibly to help me buy a computer.

This is not a pleasant story, and I don’t find it particularly pleasant to write. I don’t like prying into other people’s misery, no matter how middle class and English I am (answers on both counts: a lot). If you want to read the rest of the story, be my guest, but know this: it’s not better. It is miserable to the last drop.

“My Father, Donald Trump” was Oliver Bateman’s first written foray into projecting his disappointing and intimidating father to the rest of the world. What started with Trump, now continues with Bronze Age Pervert and me, and will no doubt continue until Bateman realizes that thankfully not everyone has a crappy dad. It’s sad that Oliver Bateman did it, but it’s nobody’s problem, least of all mine.