Dadlessness and our 21st Century Underlings

It is fairly ironic, in the most non-Alanis Morisette way, that I first came across the concept of dadlessness decades ago in the nefarious Dos and Don’ts pages of Vice magazine and then, later, in their sequel found on the Street Carnage blog. Who or what bound these institutions and later echoes of 00s hipster culture together? One of their co-founders was always Gavin McInnes – someone who has worn many caps, but for most of the last decade has made his name as a far-right agitator whose biggest founding milestone seems to have come when he launched the Proud Boys in his image. The irony being that McInnes founded an alt-right movement that has said dadlessness as its lifeblood. The boys with those absent, distant, or toxic fathers grew up to be men unmoored and unsure of themselves, yearning for strong male role models to look up to, mimic and hopefully unlock the mysteries of why they have become such insecure and vulnerable exemplars of masculinity and how to reverse the curse brought upon them.

In my eyes, this insecurity and vulnerability always seemed a logical link between the phenomenon of dadlessness and Heinrich Mann’s 1918 novel “Der Untertan” (The Underling). Mann's socio-critical, satirical novel dissected specific obsequious behaviors in Wilhelmine Germany pre-WWI. The spineless posturing of all the German Empire’s little big men who worshiped the idea of strength in the form of Prussian values, nobility and, above all, the Kaiser. In their attempts to gain favor, affection, and esteem in this ecosystem, they genuflect to any and all higher-ups, while kicking down in the direction of anyone who just happens to be underneath them. Aimed at Prussian militarism and its specific kind of mind rot and subservient behaviors, it served as a blueprint for the type of mentality that would lead millions of Germans to the slaughter in WWI and later lend itself to Nazism and millions more dead across Europe and the world (including close to 10 million more dead Germans).

Though I hate to say it, I found Gavin McInnes’ taunting of the dadless to be eye opening. Coinciding with my delving deeper into therapy, his bullying way of dissecting certain men who were obsessive fans of sports teams or generally male “try-hards” carried a kernel of genuine insight in it. A child that lacks something in childhood, be it an emotional or psychological trait, will often create what it sees as the ideal adult version of this. Because it is a child imagining strength, discipline, masculinity, dedication, presence, it turns them into cartoonish versions of those traits. The dadless will go so all out in their portrayal of loyalty to their favorite team, their idea of courting a partner, or friendship, that it becomes a caricature of what the real thing looks like and quite easily identifiable. It is safe to say that the entire range of incel and bro cultures as well as the various media and displays we see are borne out of this type of dadlessness. And it is precisely these lost boys, still striving for daddy’s affection, that constitute the life blood of movements such as the Proud Boys – whose founder seemingly sees them precisely as lost losers.

It is the current absurd worship of the perceived strength, intellect, and masculinity of anyone who happens to fall into favor of this orientation-less army that harkens back to Wilhelmine Germany. Growing up a soft boy, the Underling’s main protagonist Diederich Hessling, shows himself to be a hypocrite at every turn – ratting on friends, preaching strength while eschewing military service –, but offers true reverence for Kaiser Wilhelm II. The historic irony being that the national chauvinist Wilhelm II was himself an insecure manchild, with his withered left arm (something that cost him the love of his mother), he overcompensated by playing dress-up into adulthood, changing in and out of uniforms all day. So obsessed with war games, his grandmother Queen Victoria of England noted his obsession and how unpopular he was with his cousins. This worship of the weak and insecure by the weak and insecure as an effect of their lack of self-confidence in childhood is history on repeat.

The contemporary manifestations of the dadless are everyone who we have become forced to let shape our discourse and write our headlines. Whether it’s Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Jeff Bezos, Andrew Tate, or Donald Trump. In a way, we have two versions of the lost male, the intellectually inferior jocks and the physically inferior nerds, who have, in adulthood, formed a non-aggression pact. The jocks will let the nerds feel popular (and have them on their podcast) if the nerds humor them and make them feel smart. Pretending they are intellectual equals; they can have conversations on Marcus Aurelius or the pyramids. In return, the nerds can get their hair transplants, fillers, practice martial arts, don their ill-fitting leather jackets and be accepted as one of the guys and flex cultural clout. Dive into any of their childhoods and you will see either a dominant, overbearing, distant or completely absent father figure, or simply a lonely boy who no one liked all that much.

Now watch and listen to how they look up to and chase the affection of various insecure male leaders in a pageantry of cartoonish masculinity. A parade of the dadless and their underlings – look, there’s a shirtless Putin who never got further than mid-level KGB agent stationed in Dresden; Xi still pushing the boulder of his father and families disgrace during the Cultural Revolution; a Trump so haunted by his failures as a businessman and inability to mimic his father’s success that he wears his insecurity as if it were a melted, full-body and face prosthetic. No matter the ascension to the highest offices or the accumulation of the largest sums of wealth in the history of humanity, their surgeries, their attempts to become physically intimidating, the entire societies they try to control, the wars they instigate, all bear the signs of the anxiety baked into their very essence. It is this ability to inflict their insecurities upon the world around them that draws their underlings close, as the uncertainty and self-doubt echoes all the way down the ladder and the many little men, cosplaying masculinity as the petty kings of their little fiefdoms, go on their own little hero’s journey to soothe the festering self-doubt at the core of their being.

All this, of course, is ultimately made possible through social media, where the legions of the lost can tap into these narratives from the comfort of their incel safe spaces and let the stream of protein-based, pseudo-science feed their inner child. To be fair, this is not an exclusively male phenomenon. Trad wives carry their own burden of disorientation and inability to grasp the ambiguities of life to be discussed elsewhere. And to be even more fair, there are millions of men – both in the public eye and civilian life – who had a childhood that could be categorized as dadless and who do not succumb to these gnawing insecurities and the wild flailings of cartoon masculinity. They just seem to be the quieter ones. By now, we all know that our media landscape favors the loud, brash, simplistic, and divisive. Adults who can navigate life’s challenges, setbacks and tragedies tend to be none of those things.

Actual adult human beings have always gained insights and understanding from the grit and grief of life as well as the truths and chances for growth and happiness that they can hold within them. Most philosophies and religions are built around those truths It’s actually quite strange that now, as we face challenges never before seen in this magnitude – global climate change, the continued possibility of nuclear annihilation, the unprecedented pace of technological change – something the dadless should easily be able to fantasize into being the reason they were born to this time so as to face these seemingly insurmountable odds, they instead choose the other very human reflex of retreating into simplistic concepts and childish binaries. The true horror is, of course, that these man-children now hold the well-being of billions of humans in their hands. If only daddy had given them a hug, told them he was proud of them, maybe just been present, they would understand masculinity as it is, has been many times before, and can be. That adulthood and adult masculinity throughout time has developed a self-confidence built around facing insecurities, failing, accepting failure, showing resilience and dignity in defeat, and standing up again to move forward with persistence in the full knowledge of one’s weaknesses and how to keep overcoming the odds.