This trailer for Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s new documentary The End of Men has drawn a lot of mockery online—especially when it became clear that the device covering the genitals isn’t a glowing Covid test, but that the naked man standing on a pile of stones is in fact bathing his testicles in UV light—a process, that according to macho fitness influencers, is supposed to increase the sperm count. This claim is not backed up by science. But what does this staging of half-naked men knocking over huge car tires in slow motion have to do with the American political or even Religious Right, for which Carlson has become a trusted mouthpiece?
At first glance, the video may seem ridiculous, but it actually offers a chilling glimpse into the ideology of America’s increasingly radicalizing Right. In right-wing ideology—and most notably in fascism—gender roles are inherently political, as numerous historians and other humanities scholars have shown.
Carlson is in good company: some Republican politicians, like Josh Hawley, have made an alleged “war on men” by the left, which results in the de-masculinization of the American male, part of their culture war program. Tucker Carlson is among those on the American Right seemingly obsessed with this image of militant masculinity, who is, at the same time—anticipating LGBTQ hostility from his audience and peers—trying to distance themselves from what they see as “degenerate” sexual behavior.
Of course, there’s a certain homoeroticism to the carefully staged, slow-motion images of naked and semi-naked men wrestling, or flexing their biceps. In fascism, the male body is supposed to be a desirable one, but only in a strictly heterosexual framework. And yet, Carlson’s trailer doesn’t show any women.
So why the focus on desirable male bodies and strength? In fascism, closeness between men is only acceptable in a militarized, brutalized context. This “protects” the man from the suspicion of homosexuality. Emotional closeness is exclusively invoked in concepts such as comradeship, which at the same time frames the soldierly ideal as a synonym for the male ideal.