The phallic fallacy

"Feminism today is cancer" and "real men are right-wing" proclaims AFD member of parliament Maximilian Krah on Tiktok, "then it'll work out with the girlfriend, too." Right-wing personalities seem to be dripping with testosterone at the moment. And they thirst for more. Meta's owner Mark Zuckerberg called for "more masculine energy" for "neutered" companies before cancelling inclusion measures. According to Elon Musk, "masculinity" is now "back".

As if to prove it, a few days later – his Hitler salute intervened – he will be on stage at the Conservative Party conference in sunglasses and a baseball cap, brandishing a chainsaw – switched off, of course – and smiling behind him is Argentina's President Javier Milei, who gave it to him as a symbolic gesture to cut government spending. Milei, for his part, calls feminism "ridiculous", banned gender-neutral language in official documents in March 2024 and wants to remove the term femicide, which was only introduced in 2012, from Argentinian law. The Chinese government, meanwhile, has banned "sissy" men and other "abnormal aesthetics" for men on television in order to restore "lost morality".

The obsession with simplistic images of masculinity that have been successfully marketed to young men in recent years by right-wing influencers such as Andrew Tate (who has since been convicted of human trafficking) – and which also reach boys and girls here in Luxembourg, as we reported here – is once again firmly established in right-wing political discourse. And they seem to be catching on: 24 per cent of men in Germany voted for the AFD in 2025, compared to "only" 17 per cent of women. Donald Trump, who likes to present himself as a strong man and surround himself with them, was able to increase his share of the vote among young men from 41 per cent in 2020 to 56 per cent last year.