In the prototypical 90’s movie Demolition Man, the future is presented to us as a peaceful and utopic place. Violence is almost unheard of, guns are a relic of the past, exhibited as museum artifacts, and the police mainly spend their days giving out fines for the use of foul language. Progress, it seems, has done its job, and has led the world into a calm and equitable society. This peace, however, is quickly disturbed when the convicted criminal Simon Phoenix (played enthusiastically by Wesley Snipes), escapes his cryo-prison and starts to create havoc in the utopia. The police then realize that, in the peaceful tranquillity of modern life, they no longer possess the wherewithal –or the mental capacity– to deal with violent men such as Phoenix. In their desperation, the police decide to wake John Spartan (Silvester Stallone), a cop from the olden days whose propensity to destroy buildings in the pursuit of criminals earned him the nickname “Demolition Man”, to put a stop to Phoenix.
This movie, cheesy as it is, has earned itself a cult following in recent years; not because of its great quality or script, but because it managed to predict the future with disturbing accuracy. The movie takes inspiration from dystopian novels such as 1984 and Brave New World. One character is even named Lenina Huxley (talk about a subtle reference). It is obvious then, that the movie would have some of the prophetic aspects of the novels. However, one aspect of its plot has, especially in the last few months, come to life in an eerie way: the societal insistence on the elimination of violent men.
As of today, influencer and provocateur Andrew Tate has been permanently banned from three major social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Tate has been the subject of controversy in recent weeks due to his sudden rise in popularity. His over-the-top takes on modern culture, feminism, “gender roles”, sex, and money have been deemed “toxically masculine” by the controlling forces in our culture. Not only is he deemed as a “misogynistic pig”, but a misogynistic pig with a following and a substantial influence on young, gen-z men, who are clamoring for subversive opinions that go against the mainstream. This means he has to go.
His cancellation wouldn’t be a big deal if it were an isolated incident. However, it is indicative of a wider trend.
This is not a defense of Andrew Tate. I think he is a funny, charismatic man who knows how to grab people’s attention. He’s a controversialist. Sometimes he says things that I agree with and sometimes he says things I find repulsive. This is, however, a repudiation of the general response to Tate and men like him. Banning them has not, and will never work.
In a recent piece written by Louise Perry (writer of the recent and popular book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution) in Compact Magazine, she talks about a news story altogether common in my home country of Mexico. A drug cartel had cut off the face of a man (probably while alive), killed him, and dumped his body somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. Perry wonders who could be capable of such violence: “Who among the people I know would be the most likely to cut off someone's face?”. She then says that Andrew Tate strikes him as a likely face cutter, a man with a terrible capacity for unspeakable violence. What then, is to be done about a man like Tate? According to her, in a modern society, men like Andrew Tate shouldn’t exist in the first place. It seems that Perry, the elites in Demolition Man, and the controlling forces in our culture have made the same mistake: believing we can live in a world free of men like him.
[...] The environment in which Andrew Tate would have really flourished is Ancient Rome. In fact, he would probably have had a ball in much of the ancient world, which would also have provided him with far greater opportunities for face-cutting than the modern West, as well as plenty of women, both willing and unwilling.
A society that runs on modern Christian ethics, according to Perry, should negate the possibility of violence against women by the likes of men like Tate. To be fair, Perry also describes the Christian system of sexual ethics as a “historical aberration”, acknowledging the fact that, as of yet, only Christianity has put such a premium on the protection and inherent value of a woman. Even so, calling Tate’s views and behavior “old fashioned” implies that, in a new world, his views are, or should be, a thing of the past. This is a grave mistake.
The idea that Christianity would lead to a world without this sexist violence is foolhardy at best. At least in this life, we will never be rid of it. We live in a fallen world, and a fallen world means injustice, and justice that often comes in the form of violence towards women. Christianity promises victory in the long run, but Christ never guaranteed it in this life: “In the world you shall have tribulation” (John 16:33). Tate even describes himself as a Christian (albeit a hypocritical one), and that hasn’t stopped him from being the way that he is.
It’s important to make a distinction. A violent man is not necessarily an evil man. By violence, we are referring to a capacity for destruction. The tendency towards violence is a characteristic of a man’s temperament. It is neither good nor bad. It’s also not something we can eliminate. Human nature does not change, even if the social engineers at the World Economic Forum would like to think that it can.
One problem I have with Demolition Man is that the violent threat to society doesn’t come from within, it comes from without. Simon Phoenix is not a product of the “utopian present”. Rather, he is an escapee from a time when violence ran rampant. In contrast, the violent men we have to worry about today will not wake up from a cryogenic prison, rather, they are being born and formed right now. It doesn’t matter whether Tate is a relic of the past or whether he’s the result of the overbearing feminism of modern culture. His case, in particular, is unimportant, because there will always be men like him.
Even in modern times, we have not managed to rid ourselves of violent men. What we have done, however, is alienate them and incarcerate them. Incarceration is not a long-term solution, because it is directed towards managing the symptom of the presence of violence, not the violence itself. Isolation is a lousy solution as well, because sweeping problems under the rug never works. The incel that is hidden in his basement can be an easy object of scorn. It would be a mistake, however, to think that he is not dangerous. In situations like that, men either become depressive and suicidal, or they seethe and rot in loneliness, eventually leading to things like the Columbine massacre.
Banning Andrew Tate will do very little to address the problem. We will always have dogs of his breed. So, instead of getting rid of them all, we should strive to be equipped to deal with them by making use of their violent tendencies in the service of the common good. Ancient civilizations understood this. Violent men always had a place to be themselves back then. Today’s hunters, soldiers, warriors, and fighters seem to have no place to go but street gangs and cartels. The bureaucratization of the military has all but guaranteed that, even if you join their ranks, you will probably never see combat. The intrusion of women and safteyism into combat sports have made them a less appealing prospect for violent men. Even if that weren’t the case, it would be difficult to rid men of their violence by asking them to join a Jiu-Jitsu class.
The insistence on the cancellation of Tate seems especially weird coming from the left. It seems as if they learned little from the cancellation of Alex Jones. There is little you can do to make drinking more appealing to a teen than to prohibit him from drinking. Just as there is little you can do to make a thinker more interesting than outright banning him. Many young men’s conclusions will be along the lines of “I’ve never heard of Andrew Tate, but if he’s pissing off the right people, the establishment, I should probably hear what he has to say.” It won’t work in the short term and it won’t work in the long term.
The answer then, would not be to eliminate violent men, but to strive to turn them all into John Spartans, good men who can stand against the ever-present Simon Phoenixs of the world, even if it means they will always bring a little destruction and chaos with them. Better to have a demolition man and not need him, than to need him and not have him at all.