Brief: RFK Jr Hijacks the “Crisis in Masculinity” (w/Natalia Petrzela)
Masculinity, in all its wounded and preening anxiety, is the perennial currency of American populism.
America’s foremost public historian on fitness and education, Natalia Petrzela, returns to the pod to discuss her recent study, with Ilyse Hogue, of the appeal RFK Jr. has with young men, and what progressives can learn from it.
Show Notes
Bio – Natalia Petrzela
RFK Jr. has a distinct appeal when it comes to young male voters — Petrzela and Hogue
Robert F. Kennedy Jr | "My Plan To Heal Addiction" | News Nation
Prior coverage of RFK Jr.
Brief: RFK Jr Flirts with Body Fascism (w/Natalia Petrzela) — Conspirituality
164: The Two Faces of Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. — Conspirituality
Brief: The New Age Origin Story of RFK Jr’s Campaign — Conspirituality
Brief: RFK Jr’s New Director of Propaganda — Conspirituality
Special Report: RFK Jr.’s Independence Day — Conspirituality
Brief: RFK's Health Propaganda Roundtable — Conspirituality
Brief: RFK Jr., The Anti-Vax Candidate — Conspirituality
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Hello everyone, welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersection of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
And today, we can add to that tagline how masculinity, in all of its wounded and preening anxiety, is the perennial currency of American populism.
I'm Matthew Remsky, and I'm joined by friend of the pod and America's leading public historian of fitness culture and the education culture wars, Natalia Petruzzello.
Welcome back, Professor.
Hi, it's great to be here.
Thanks for that great intro and the invitation.
We are on Instagram and threads at Conspirituality Pod, and you can access all of our episodes ad-free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on Patreon or just the bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions.
Because as independent media creators, we really appreciate your support.
Okay, Natalia, last time we spoke, you provided some really incisive commentary on RFK Jr.' 's alt-health and personal fitness obsessions and how they scan against the ableism of our culture at large and the Kennedy family's role in modern fitness policy.
So I'm going to link to that interview for our listeners.
But to get us in the mood, we can just share the first few lines of Go You Chicken Fat Go, Which is the JFK-commissioned, phys-ed rally song.
Touchdown, every morning, ten times, not just now and then.
Give that chicken fat back to the chicken and don't be chicken again.
No, don't be chicken again Yeah, so that brings back some memories I'm sure for so
many people but also for from your research too, right?
Oh, yes.
I mean, thanks a lot for getting that back in my head.
I think for like a decade, I couldn't get it out of my head.
But yeah, for those listeners who may not know, that is the Chicken Fat song, which John F. Kennedy commissioned to be released as part of his physical fitness program in the early 1960s.
But you're back today because of a recent article you wrote for MSNBC with Elise Hogue, who's a senior fellow at New America, and you take that RFK Jr.
fitness theme as a starting point for what I would call a really definitive study on how he appeals to young men outside of, but also connected to the Gold's Gym vibe.
And I think this article is hitting at an interesting time because Bobby has been shut out of the primary process so far, which has culminated in his absence from Super Tuesday last week.
But he's still drawing a lot of cash and attention and media time from the diagonalist tech bro and bro science set and their youthful male followers.
So I wanted to walk through Your observations there, step by step.
The first thing you guys write is, Kennedy's popularity is concentrated in the podcasts and blogs that make up the manosphere, a medium he has committed to dominate.
At the same time, growing evidence indicates young men are gravitating rightward politically and feeling disaffected socially.
So, Bobby has been open in his love for the podcast format, and he's compared his mastery of it to his uncle's mastery of television.
How, Natalia, do medium and message come together here for him?
Well, I think that, you know, you and I are not about to throw shade to the podcast sphere because we love it, right?
We're not going to bite the hand that feeds.
But I think particularly the kind of podcast that he's going on, right?
Rogan, Jordan Peterson, like he is speaking to an audience a lot, most of them men, right, about the ills that plague America, but specifically speaking to, I think, a kind of masculine disaffection.
And also, you know, the podcast environment or the podcast format allows a kind of like amplitude of expression that I think serves him really well, because he really is a conspiracy theorist in a lot of ways.
And that takes elaboration.
And so that form allows him to kind of pull listeners along with him in a way that I think is very effective.
You know, and I've pointed this out before, but I just want to drop it in here, too, that he has also said that podcasting allows him the length of time in speaking that it takes for him to warm up his voice so that it feels better, so that he feels more confident.
And because when he started getting into podcasting, I was like, oh, well, you're actually overcoming a disability here.
And that's very interesting.
So that's in the mix, too.
I agree.
I thought the same thing, because in many ways, I mean, now a lot of podcasts do go to video, especially the big ones that he's on.
But his voice is in some ways a liability because of the way he sounds, right?
He has this disability.
And so, I mean, I guess it ultimately serves him because he gets to warm up his voice.
But that is not necessarily, I think, a natural conclusion to draw.
Okay, so then you write, younger millennials and members of Gen Z,
of all genders have been raised amid ongoing war, increasing inequality and impending climate catastrophe.
The forced social isolation of COVID-19 hit just when they would have been
independently exploring the world.
That is to say, they should be given some grace for viewing politicians skeptically.
Young males seem to be faring especially badly amid this tumult as many have noted.
So Natalia, as a historian, it's your business to examine how social movements
respond to and are contingent on these complex systemic shocks.
And Bobby's promises of dignified freedom seem to hit really in the right place at the right time.
Is it a kind of thing that reminds you of anything else, this opportunism?
Well, any third party candidate, I think you could see some of this same mood driving it.
But I think, to go back to your question about podcasts, right now, not only is the kind of institutional disaffection very, very pronounced, but there is a very democratized media environment in which to amplify it.
And so I think somebody, I mean, Kennedy is sort of special because he is a Kennedy.
He probably would have gotten that attention no matter what in certain ways.
But I think we are in this unique historical moment where there is that, you know, very, very strong disaffection with these two old guys who are running for office and an environment to kind of make that disaffection very fertile.
And I think it's important to point out that he doesn't provide policy answers with regard to ongoing war, inequality, and climate.
Like, he's a self-avowed free market fan and, you know, his organization is now denying that polio is a virus.
So, the bottom line is that he doesn't really articulate the grievances of the masses in order to solve them, does he?
Well, he certainly doesn't want to solve them through institutional means.
And I think that that is the thing that I think is most dangerous about him, that he does often start with, like, legitimate concerns that someone who's not totally wacko would have, right?
Big Pharma makes too much money on our backs.
Microplastics are a major problem.
You know, the COVID policy response in certain areas probably exceeded what science dictated and had real social costs to it.
But Like a politician, especially like a Kennedy, maybe you would assume, and I think a lot of people do, that like government is part of the solution here.
But on those podcasts and everywhere else, the place that he takes you is like, no, we have to burn down these institutions.
They are fundamentally corrupt.
And that gets us to a really scary place because we have no collective answer to any of these problems, which are, I think, some of them quite legitimate.
We are just on our own, you know, with this man to guide us, maybe.
But we are networked together in a series of podcast studios.
That's where we have our connections, I suppose.
I guess so.
Or the gym, right?
And I mean, to, you know, throw in a little history here, we started kind of joking around about JFK.
But I think it is really interesting.
I mean, RFK's Super Bowl ad, which was probably the most widely seen piece of media that he produced, was totally retro.
It basically almost looked like a John F. Kennedy campaign ad.
He throws in this fitness stuff, yes, because wellness bros are like a great population for him, but also JFK was this champion of fitness and youth, but JFK was a champion of fitness policy.
RFK uses it as another example about how like individualism and like motivation and natural solutions are the way to be healthy.
not vaccines, not health care policy.
And I think that's really important to like, disaggregate the like, history-ish vibe,
the retro vibe he wants to sell us with what that history is
and how he actually departs from that precedent.
Well, you go on in the article to note something potentially positive,
which is, you write, his young fans, RFK Jr.'s,
's young fans have not embraced Trump's brazen moral bankruptcy, nor have they opted out of the electoral project entirely.
Rather, it could be a signal that young voters are looking for something different to latch onto.
So I think this is a crucial point, that his politics might be diagonalist, but as a lawyer, as a Kennedy, he doesn't have any illusions about, he probably has no capacity for operating outside of the political machine.
And, you know, he might be hopelessly paranoid, but he's not a nihilist.
We've observed that for his, you know, erstwhile depoliticized New Age and wellness followers, he's actually provided the thrill of legitimacy.
He's got like Aubrey Marcus wondering where he's going to register to vote.
So I wonder if you think that his rhetoric around fairness and reform and the possibility of a renewed American politics is like a real point of attraction.
Yes.
So Elise and I got the idea to write this article together.
By the way, we'd never met.
We were on this listserv and, you know, our fellow travelers on the left were kind of like laughing at RFK Jr.
and calling his followers idiots and hacks.
And we kind of offlined about like the way we thought that was one kind of problematic, given that he might have some real power to, you know, throw the election to Trump, but also just so condescending and showed such a lack of curiosity to understand what what drove people to him.
You know, neither of us are voting RFK, spoiler alert, but I'll tell you that one of the things that we identified, as you said, is that like, given what the context that we're existing in is, okay, so the guys who are, and they are guys mostly, and young people who are drawn to him, what exactly are they drawn to?
Well, Trump Doesn't attract them.
And what is Trump?
He is, you know, kind of like crude and he's a cheater and he is just overtly a misogynist and he just represents a kind of like outright corruption that apparently they don't want.
They're also not like, honestly, a lot of my students who are like, all the parties are the same.
I'm just not voting.
Like, screw the elections.
They're not like that either.
And so what is it about RFK Jr.
that attracts them?
Sure, some of them might be like full-throated vaccine deniers or etc.
But I think a lot of them, like, as we said in the article, right, he is a crusading idealist, right?
And some of his ideals, I think, have gotten kind of noxious.
But if you think about the early environmentalism and kind of the way he speaks, that's ambitious, that's idealistic.
And then to this point about young men, which maybe we're getting to in the conversation, if you think about the economic dislocations in this country in the last several years, certainly for this younger generation, And the way that we tie sort of righteous masculinity or legitimate masculinity to being a breadwinner.
My God, RFK with his two houses and his wealth and his wife and his home represents something which no longer seems really accessible.
And he gives you someone to blame for it while embodying a kind of like, you could be like me if you vote for me.
This is what I'm fighting for for you.
Well, I'm thinking of the New Age writer Charles Eisenstein, who's been involved in the messaging for his campaign for a long time now.
I'm not sure the extent to which he's still participating, but he winds up sitting behind RFK Jr.
in Congress while Bobby is giving his thoughts about internet censorship and so on in front of Jim Jordan.
And I'm thinking, oh, You have really got an opportunity now, Charles, to put on a tie and participate and to be a kind of witness to a political process that you've really stood outside of.
And I think I can feel vicariously a kind of thrill with regard to that.
You know, what you're saying about his attainments and promises, you really reflect in this next
part of the essay where you say, the appetite for self-efficacy and purpose animates Kennedy's
broader attractiveness as the embodiment of a sort of American dream that young men feel
is increasingly elusive and thus even more enticing. Then you go on writing,
a virtuous inclination toward protection and self-sufficiency powers Kennedy's appeal,
but in equal measure, so does a paranoia that invites fascism in the name of fighting authoritarianism.
So, after a generation of blackpilling, it seems that Kennedy offers the hope for dignity But what are the politics that might give these sentiments legs and steer people away from Kennedy excesses, like the things that go along with all of that?
Like, how could these virtuous inclinations be turned into something that's not votes for Kennedy?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, I mean, I really think that, you know, I mean, I'm going to vote Democratic for this election, and that's kind of who I am.
But I think that the Democrats could do a much better job at kind of pumping up some of these better ideas that Kennedy represents, both in terms of, you know, acknowledging that Young men are having a hard time right now.
I'm disappointed that too many people want to dismiss this masculinity crisis by saying masculinity has always been in crisis.
Yes, I'm a historian of gender.
I know that, but it doesn't mean it's not felt as real to people experiencing it in each moment.
I think that they could lean into that.
I think that they could make more of the policies that they're already supporting around healthcare, around, you know, housing access.
I mean, these are all things that could give back that economic dignity.
And then, and this is like kind of controversial, but I think, unfortunately, one of the things that is drawing a lot of support to Kennedy is that like, He and certainly people further to the right of him, they point to the left and they say, like, these people don't even think men are men and women are women anymore.
And they kind of point to, you know, gender ideology, as they call it, as being indicators that the whole left is lost and, you know, that we're the only people who have our head on straight, particularly around these gender issues.
Now, I am a staunch defender of trans rights, so I'm not saying that trans people's rights should be thrown under the bus.
But I think that there's a way that people on the left sometimes allow the most extreme versions of that rhetoric to take up much more air than what they actually stand for.
And I say this, I think about this all the time in terms of women's rights.
It is the Democrats who are standing up for abortion rights, for protection against domestic violence, for, I mean, everything that defends what we think of as women's rights.
They know women exist and have unique problems, and we don't amplify that enough.
And I think that he really trades on that.
They don't even know what a man and a woman is anymore, and I think that we are really stupid to let him own that.
It's dangerous.
Well, speaking to how you cover the crisis of masculinity in the article, you go right there where you say that progressive and democratic labor, housing and healthcare policies are focused on remedying precisely the inequalities that he's talking about, but a vocal strand of the left's cultural messaging decrying toxic masculinity And dismissing any talk of a crisis in masculinity is overwrought.
Or even declaring, men are trash.
These are things that serve to scold young men for these aspirations and to make the liberal left seem impervious to their ambitions and anxieties.
Now, you said this was going to be controversial.
I think you're going to have readers, we're going to have listeners who don't like hearing this.
But why do you think progressives have a hard time looking in the mirror on this issue?
Well, it's hard because patriarchy is so real and we are all living with its consequences every single day.
And it's not its consequences like it's over, it's consequences like it keeps on perpetuating.
But I mean, one thing, honestly, that I realized or started thinking about seriously more as a mother than as a scholar Is that in some ways we've made so much progress about teaching about patriarchy and misogyny and all these things.
But when we sort of put that education or that responsibility or sometimes even that blame on like a 12 year old boy who's like, wait, what?
I'm just like a kid.
I don't think I have a lot of power.
Like people are telling me what to do all the time.
Right.
That is not necessarily a very productive way to have these conversations and to and to promote this sort of education.
And I think, unfortunately, like a vocal strand of the left like digs in on that.
Right.
And they dig in on that sometimes because the worst possible retrograde people are the ones criticizing that.
Right.
It's not like usually me, who's on board with most of these ideas, being like, yeah, maybe we should talk about patriarchy differently or Not so much with 12-year-old boys or not in the same way.
It's like Katie Britt or Sarah Palin or like, you know, Donald Trump or these awful people who want to get rid of that and deny patriarchy exists.
And so, I mean, I am kind of a centrist in a lot of ways, but I think that like articulating these critiques and helping us do better when we're actually trying to combat patriarchy could go a long way.
We don't do that, we cede ground to the RFKs or even worse.
Yeah, there's gotta be something, as a parent myself of two boys, there has to be some way of introducing the ideas and the historical wisdom that is not about closing doors on or foreclosing a particular identity in the world.
It has to be, to me, it has to be about the reason that we have Feminist progress at all is of benefit to everybody for the following reasons.
It's hard to do that.
It takes a lot of, I think, in-person practice and empathy.
It's not a textbook kind of thing.
You're the historian of education, so I imagine you know how difficult this would be to think about in terms of policy.
Oh, it's so hard.
It's so hard in part because so many people are still actually bought into those ideas.
I mean, you know, the famous question of like, why do any women vote against reproductive rights and, you know, pay equity and all the rest?
Well, in some ways it can be more profitable and a lot of not just economic ways to hitch yourself to patriarchy than to resist it.
Right.
And so there are lots of people invested in perpetuating these ideas.
But I think exactly what you're saying is right.
And this goes probably beyond gender to racial justice, et cetera.
How do we articulate a worldview where we make clear that when we advance, all of us, we kind of all win, that it's not a zero sum game.
And I think that, you know, in this gender piece, especially with like young boys, we've lost some of that.
It's really hard to do.
But I agree.
It's in-person conversations.
It's getting away from these, you know, stupid, unhelpful truisms like men are trash.
Why are men even?
I mean, I'm all for girls rule.
But what's the implication of girls rule, you know?
I remember my son, I back then thought it was like really cute when he was like six or something.
Actually, I don't remember what it was.
It was around the like RBG, kind of like Sonia Sotomayor, like excitement, which I was genuinely excited about.
And he's like, Mom, can men be Supreme Court justices too?
And it was so cute.
And I don't have a problem with him, like troubling that assumption.
But I'm like, OK, that's actually just like historically so inaccurate if you're going around believing like men can't even be Supreme Court justices.
So I think we're missing something a little bit.
And I mean, where history and education is a litany of overcorrections and coming back, et cetera.
And I think that we should be a little bit humble in that way rather than just digging our heels in, you know, and saying, Like, we must go further in this way.
I've got three last questions here about issues, issues that you may not have had space to cover.
I don't know how many words they gave you, but have you heard that RFK Jr.
has this plan to bring back fitness camps for youth with substance use issues where, you know, kids would be, teens would be enrolled for like three or four years, but they wouldn't have cell phones and they'd be working on the farm or they'd be making wicker baskets or things like that.
Have you heard about this?
I actually haven't heard about that.
That's verified that that's what he wants to do?
Yeah, he talked about it on on the News Nation debate or the town hall.
And there's a there's we'll we'll link to the video in the show notes.
But it's it's titled My Plan to Heal Addiction.
I mean, I'm not surprised at all.
Isn't that the most on brand thing you've ever heard in your life?
It totally is, right?
Yeah.
And I mean, it's so on brand because look, he's someone who's overcome addiction.
He's someone who's a big champion of exercise.
He's someone, I actually haven't heard them say this, but I'm sure he's sympathetic to like the 5G conspiracy.
It's about like technology, right?
He's a real like natural living kind of guy.
It doesn't surprise me at all.
Now, I don't know what his camps would look like in actuality, but it does seem like one of these ideas, and I think he has a lot of them, where there's a nugget of good in it, right?
Yeah.
What parent doesn't think their kids are online too much, even addicted?
What parent doesn't think that, like, getting out in nature and just, like, working hard and using your body wouldn't be better for you?
I mean, that's probably true for most people, children or adults.
I just wouldn't want him to be executive director or, you know, commander in chief to make that a kind of, you know, requirement, especially because of his anti-anti-depressant, like, line of thought, which I think is really, really dangerous.
Well, I think that, yes, it is bound up with his rhetoric on SSRIs and their non-existent linkage to mass shootings.
And there's something about, wouldn't, yes, wouldn't every parent love to think of a place of repair and rest for their kids who had fallen on hard times out in the country with fresh air?
The thing about it is that it has to be chosen.
It would have to be wanted by the kids themselves.
It would have to be something that they were fully bought into and that, you know, they wouldn't lose connection with their entire world by giving up on their phones for four years.
And so there's something authoritarian about that, a very sort of disciplinary parenting mode that is, you know, buck up, young man.
And it's odd because he definitely did not have that himself.
Oh, he definitely did not have that himself.
There's also, I mean, talk about historical precedent that is so connected to a tradition as old as American cities.
So we're talking like mid 19th century of the kind of romance and passion for the regeneration that comes with nature.
And that kind of like deep skepticism of technology, of industrialization, and both like real ambivalence, right?
Because this is what makes us a modern and civilized society.
On the other hand, it's killing and corrupting us.
And so what do you do with children who are seen to be vulnerable?
You send them out West.
And there were very coercive programs that were called placing out programs.
There were these orphan trains where they would take kids, often with no consent, Yeah, well, and to serve everybody cornflakes like John Harvey Kellogg to make sure that they stop masturbating or something like that.
like basically use them as slave labor.
So we have a real history of that.
And so that's not like, I wouldn't trust him not to go there, right?
Yeah, well, and to serve everybody cornflakes like John Harvey Kellogg to make sure
that they stop masturbating or something like that.
Exactly, exactly.
Relatedly to that last point anyway, Bobby has perfected the Kennedy look.
Slender cut suits, impeccable grooming, rugged jeans, white t-shirts.
There's a shadow side to his sex appeal, which is to be found in numerous reports through the years of compulsive affairs he indulged in while married to Mary Richardson, who according to her family was distraught over Infidelity, and died by suicide in 2012.
I, as a journalist, have been waiting for some other shoe to drop on this part of his life, but I wonder if a Ronan Farrow-type story drops between now and the election, would it matter?
Has the manosphere insulated itself from MeToo-era accountability?
Would a perceived cancellation attempt actually play to his advantage, even?
I think it would not matter.
I mean, I think maybe a kind of Epstein-like or like a child pornography type of situation, that could really sully him.
But no, he's known for having been a womanizer for many years.
So is JFK, by the way.
And the fact, I actually think that's part of his appeal.
I mean, as we wrote in the piece, the fact that he could be a womanizer for so many years, but he could reinvent himself and not be canceled, that he didn't get so-called me too'd, but came back and has this like beautiful, adoring, very smart wife who loves him and that he could reinvent himself.
I think that's so appealing to so many young men who kind of see, you know, here, certainly in the manosphere, but even around them, this idea that like, oh, you can't do anything anymore.
Like you're always like on the verge of getting, you know, hit with some kind of sexual assault charge.
And I think he really speaks, his life story speaks to a time when that wasn't the case.
So I would not think at all that there would be a case like that could throw him.
And now that I think of it, hearing you describe it, for the younger male voter to contemplate the person who might have, you know, shown the behaviors that they themselves currently are involved in or trying to struggle with and who are looking for some kind of redemptive message or role model.
It's kind of an incredibly perfect story for them, is that, yeah, I can clean myself up.
It's actually, it goes farther than Jordan Peterson, really, because RFK Jr.
was, you know, 14 years an addict, and did actually rehabilitate.
Jordan Peterson didn't really have to recover from anything except his trip to Moscow.
So, yeah, it's a really fascinating, ideal model, isn't he?
Oh, I think so.
I mean, America loves a comeback story, but I think that his in particular at this moment is so evocative for a lot of people.
And again, I understand that.
I mean, this is a culture that's immersed in like cancel culture conversations.
And like I say, you know, complaints about me to overreach.
And I think that for some young men like his life story just provides such an alternative path and a vision of, you know, what they might want.
Last question, abortion.
Bobby has a mixed record on abortion rights and has typically, at least within the campaign, avoided the issue in this post-Roe hellscape.
Recently, he refused to answer a question about the Alabama Supreme Court's ruling on IVF.
Where do you think the winds will blow him in this crucial realm of medical freedom and bodily autonomy?
Like, what do you think his young male followers want to hear from him on abortion rights?
I think that's actually really tough because there's the medical autonomy, bodily freedom piece of it, which would lead you to think, oh, he would, you know, let people have abortions and like the government shouldn't be in your bedroom or on your body.
There's the manosphere part of it, which is like, oh, women are ours to control.
But let's not forget, Most young men don't want the girls that they have sex with to end up knocked up and like leaving them with a kid to take care of or to worry about it.
So I actually think, and I hope, that if he takes a stronger position on abortion, that that would be a pro-choice position.
To me, that actually makes, it coheres with his worldview.
I think in a lot of ways, even the guys who tend a little further right believe, you know, If they're not total like Christian ideologues, I think a lot of them probably support the right to an abortion, too.
So I hope we could use just more voices being pro-choice.
So I'll take Bobby Kennedy if you're coming our way.
Natalia, thanks so much for stopping by.
It's really great to hear from you.
Thanks for studying this guy and keeping up with him.
