more natural for men of all cultures to apply different ethical approaches
to group members and outsiders.18 And aside from favorable comments
about Guillaume Faye’s Archaeofuturism, Donovan does not cite European
New Rightists.19
In broader terms, Donovan’s male tribalism resonates strongly with
themes found in classical fascism— meaning the broad political category
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that in the 1920s– 1940s encompassed movements in many countries— of
violent male camaraderie at odds with “bourgeois” family life, glorifica-
tion of the masculine body, exclusion of women, and sometimes even ho-
moeroticism. F. T. Marinetti’s 1909 “Futurist Manifesto” prefigured some
of these themes: “We want to glorify war— the only cure for the world—
militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beau-
tiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.”20 Early fascism took the
intense, trauma- laced bonds that World War I veterans had formed in the
trenches and transferred them into street- fighting formations such as
the Italian squadristi and German storm troopers. And while fascism in
power murderously suppressed homosexuality, the movement celebrated
manliness and spiritual ties between men in ways that were sometimes
homoerotic, with Ernst Röhm’s Brownshirts the most famous example.
Donovan alluded to these resonances in a 2013 essay in which he
embraced the term “anarcho- fascism.” Donovan highlighted connections
between male tribalist principles and the original fascist symbol, the
fasces, a bundle of wooden rods that stands for strength and unity.
Rejecting the common belief that fascism equals a totalitarian state or
top- down bureaucratic rule, he identified the fasces with the “bottom- up
idea” of “a unified male collective. . . . True tribal unity can’t be imposed
from above. It’s an organic phenomenon. Profound unity comes from
men bound together by a red ribbon of blood.” The ax at the center of
the fasces represented “a threat of violence . . . a warning, a promise of
retaliation” that men could still take up a century later. “The modern, ef-
feminate, bourgeois ‘First World’ states can no longer produce new honor
cultures. New, pure warrior- gangs can only rise in anarchic opposition to
the corrupt, feminist, anti- tribal, degraded institutions of the established
order. . . . Ur- fascism is the source of honor culture and authentic patri-
archal tradition.”21
Broader social critique and vision of change
While Donovan’s critique of US society centers on gender, it also includes
several other common right- wing themes. Like many rightists, Donovan
criticizes “globalism,” meaning a project spearheaded by elites in recent
decades to weaken borders in pursuit of profit and power. Globalism’s
emphasis on trade, he argues, has helped enshrine universalism (an ef-
feminate form of ethics with roots in classical philosophy) as ideologi-
cally dominant.22 He denounces “the progressive state” for pursuing
2
4
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249
policies—
such as globalism, multiculturalism, and militarism—
that
serve only economic and political elites and those loyal to them.
The US in Donovan’s view has a fundamentally broken system, under
which “the rulers and toadies” safeguard their own status by keeping
most people “separate, emasculated, weak, dependent, faithless, fearful
and ‘non- violent.’ ” He believes the US is on the road to become “a failed
state— a state where no one believes in the system, where the government
is just another shakedown gang, where no one confuses the law with jus-
tice.”23 To him this is a hopeful scenario: “In a failed state, we go back to
Wild West rules, and America becomes a place for men again— a land
full of promise and possibility that rewards daring and ingenuity, a place
where men can restart the world.”24
This forecast affects Donovan’s ideas about how to bring about the so-
ciety he wants. Instead of conventional forms of political activism such
as public demonstrations, electoral campaigns, or even armed struggle
against the progressive state, his strategy for change is for men to “build
the kinds of resilient communities and networks of skilled people that
can survive the collapse and preserve [their] identities after the Fall.”25
Donovan calls on men to forge small groups and build trust through
shared activities such as hunting, martial arts, and sports. He also urges
people to sever their “emotional connection” to the state and stop looking
to it for help and direction.26
Reception and political involvement
Donovan’s innovative thought and prolific output have enhanced his visi-
bility and helped him to engage with several interrelated political networks.
Manosphere
Donovan is sometimes seen as part of the manosphere, an online sub-
culture of men who believe that women hold too much power, and who
advocate various strategies to reassert male dominance, ranging from
vilifying feminists, to changing divorce and domestic violence laws, to
sexual predation. Like Donovan, many manospherians invoke evolu-
tionary psychology to bolster claims that traditional gender roles are in-
herent in human nature, and many of them emphasize male bonding as
a key part of reasserting men’s power. Donovan has written favorably that
“The manosphere is an outer realm where male tribalism rules. . . . [It] is
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not about what women want, or about making sure men and women are
equal. The manosphere is about men writing about who men are and what
they want, without supervision.”27 For a time he was a regular contributor
to the Spearhead, an antifeminist online journal founded by W. F. Price
that operated from 2009 to 2014. Since then, however, his involvement
in manosphere discussions and activities has been more limited. For ex-
ample, he had little or no involvement in Gamergate, a major campaign
launched by manosphere activists in 2014 to harass and vilify women who
worked in, or were critical of sexism in, the video game industry.28 In ad-
dition, Donovan’s name does not appear in searches of several leading
manosphere websites and blogs.29
Homophobia is widespread within the manosphere, and this has af-
fected Donovan’s reception there, although not necessarily in the way one
would expect. For example, influential manospherian Daryush Valizadeh
(“Roosh V”), who is staunchly antigay, commented after reading The Way
of Men, “Ironic that a gay man wrote one of the manliest books I’ve ever
read.” Another prominent manosphere figure, Paul Elam, has contended
that Donovan has become “obsessed” with proving that he is manly as a
result of being homosexual in a culture that does not regard him as a real
man. “Li
ghten up, Jack. You’re gay. Just accept it. You don’t have to be het-
erosexual, or an over compensating asshole, to be a man.”30
Alt Right
Donovan’s involvement with the Alt Right has been more extensive and
important. Donovan wrote for Spencer’s original AlternativeRight.com on-
line journal, which operated from 2010 to 2012. He has written for sev-
eral other Alt Right publications, such as Spencer’s later online journal
Radix, Jared Taylor’s American Renaissance, and Greg Johnson’s Counter-
Currents; and has spoken at both National Policy Institute and American
Renaissance conferences. Alt Rightists have been important supporters
of his work for years; in the acknowledgments for The Way of Men, for ex-
ample, Donovan thanks several of them, including Spencer, Johnson, Scott
Locklin of AlternativeRight.com, and Jef Costello of Counter- Currents.31
Donovan has contributed to an ideological shift within the Alt Right
toward more misogynistic politics. In its early years, the Alt Right
encompassed a range of viewpoints on gender. Several writers argued that
women’s political participation was valuable and important, and some
expressed concern that women were underrepresented in Alt Right circles.
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Jack Donovan and Male Tribalism
251
Andrew Yeoman declared bluntly in AlternativeRight.com that sexual ha-
rassment and other sexist behavior by men in the movement were driving
women away: “We need women’s help, now more than ever,” yet “nothing
says ‘you are not important to us’ [more] than sexualizing women in the
movement.”32
Within a few years, however, such quasi- feminist sentiments had
disappeared from the Alt Right, replaced by claims that women were un-
suited by nature to political activism, and that “it’s not that women should
be unwelcome [in the Alt Right], it’s that they’re unimportant,” as Matt
Forney put it.33 This shift partly reflected an influx of manospherians into
the Alt Right since about 2014, as antifeminist activists such as Forney
and Andrew Auernheimer (“weev”) embraced white nationalism. Yet
the change built directly on gender politics that Jack Donovan had been
advocating within the Alt Right for years.
Donovan’s sexuality has made him a focal point for controversy within
the Alt Right. One outraged blogger asked in 2012, “How on Earth [does] a
nationalist site that purports to defend traditional, white interests end up
promoting the views of out- of- the- closet homosexuals?” In 2015 Andrew
Anglin of the Daily Stormer urged people to boycott the National Policy
Institute conference when he learned that Donovan would be speaking.34
Many Alt Rightists, however, have actively defended the inclusion of ho-
mosexual men in the movement. In 2010, Counter- Currents republished a
2002 article by Greg Johnson, which argued that white nationalists should
not allow themselves to be divided over sexuality, homophobia was a Jewish
invention, and “the bonded male group, the Männerbund . . . is the foun-
dation of all higher forms of civilization, particularly Aryan civilizations.”
These themes have been further elaborated by a Counter- Currents au-
thor, James O’Meara, who is both a white nationalist and openly homo-
sexual. Donovan’s participation in the movement has also been treated
respectfully even by those who emphasize “traditional” values, such as
the Christian- identified Brad Griffin of the Occidental Dissent blog and
Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Worker Party.35 Donovan’s in-
volvement in the Alt Right made it easier for the flamboyantly gay right-
winger Milo Yiannopoulos to carve out a role as an ambassador between
the Alt Right and mainstream conservatism.
Questions of his sexuality aside, some of Donovan’s other views set
him apart from the majority of Alt Rightists. While most enthusiastically
supported Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Donovan did
not. He argued that a President Trump would simply mask the system’s
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fatal flaws and that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be preferable, be-
cause it would “drive home the reality that white men are no longer in
charge . . . and that [the United States] is no longer their country and never
will be again.”36
Donovan was also unusual in that his politics center on gender, not
race. He is sympathetic to many white nationalist aims and considers
it “heroic” to challenge “the deeply entrenched anti- white bias of mul-
ticulturalist orthodoxies.”37 Yet he also declared that “I am not a White
Nationalist because I don’t think people are worth saving just because
they’re white. . . . Most white people suck. What else have you got?” In
broader terms, “a tribal community has to have a lot more going for it than
race. . . . Race alone isn’t enough to unite a people.”38
Despite these criticisms, Donovan aided white nationalists for years by
associating with them visibly and publicly. As Greg Johnson of Counter-
Currents wrote in a public reply to Donovan’s “Why I Am Not a White
Nationalist”:
You are a valuable ally precisely because you never claimed to
be a White Nationalist, but you still stuck up publicly for White
Nationalists, wrote for our publications, and spoke at our events.
Having people who are not White Nationalists openly associate with
us gives us social validation and builds bridges to the mainstream.39
However, in August 2017 Donovan posted an update to “Why I Am Not
a White Nationalist,” in which he repudiated the Alt Right and declared
that he would no longer allow white nationalists to publish or use his
work. Although the vast majority of Alt Rightists had identified with white
nationalism for several years, Donovan criticized a recent manifesto by
Richard Spencer for proclaiming the Alt Right to be a white nationalist
movement, and the recent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville (at
which an antifascist protester was killed) for bringing Alt Rightists to-
gether with neo- Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen, “people who actively de-
spise me and my friends.”40
Wolves of Vinland
Donovan joined the Wolves of Vinland after a 2014 visit to their Virginia
camp.41 Founded in or around 2006 by the brothers Paul and Mattias
Waggener, the wolf draws on Norse and Germanic paganism, Julius
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Jack Donovan and Male Tribalism
253
Evola’s Traditionalism, the manosphere, motorcycle gangs, and power-
lifting and mixed martial arts. There are three chapters in North America
(including the Pacific Northwest branch that Donovan founded), with a
larger feeder organization known as Operation Werewolf active in several
European countries as well as the US.
The wolf is often labeled white nationalist, a description that Donovan
rejects.42 Members of the wolf often sport symbols, such as the Black Sun
and the Wolfsangel, that have been extensively (but not exclusively) used
by white nationalist groups, and Operation Werewolf shares its name with
the Nazi underground military organization set up in 1944– 45 to operate
behind Allied lines. The wolf also rallied behind one member who was im-
prisoned for burning down a black church. A number of Alt Right groups
have viewed the wolf as a kindred organ ization representing principles
similar to their own. But unlike most of the Alt Right, the wolf of Vinland
is primarily a physical membership organization, and it also differs from
the predominantly white- collar Alt Right in that most of its membership
appears to be working class.43
The wolf of Vinland embodies many aspects of male tribalism, al-
though it initially took shape without reference to Donovan’s work.
Paul Waggener has commented that when he first read The Way of Men,
he “kind of looked around [and thought], ‘Man, has this guy been fol-
lowing us or what?’ ” Donovan’s work helped the group clarify and define
its philosophy, so that developing Donovan’s “four pillars of mascu-
linity . . . strength, courage, mastery, and honor,” became “the core of what
we do.”44 The wolf of Vinland celebrates male bonding and violence in
ways that are literally ritualistic, using animal sacrifices and holding fights
between members to test their manliness.45 There is a strong emphasis
on tribalism in the sense of being culturally separate from the outside
world. And although Waggener says that they “look for equality between
sexes,” men and women are seen as having sharply different roles, with
men firmly at the center.46 Members of the wolf, Donovan included, also
emphasize the aesthetics of masculinity, using social media extensively to
show off their muscular bodies, weapons, and tattoos.47
Like Donovan, the wolf criticizes current- day society not only for
shaking up traditional gender roles but also for moving toward a “cor-
porate monoculture” that “mediates all activity through television,
through the internet” and “creates hollow people . . . who have no sense
of community . . . roots, [or] tribe.” Again like Donovan, its approach
to bringing about the kind of society it wants is simply to build it— to
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Key Thinkers of the Radical Right Page 42
