Attribution: Denitza Tchacarova: A Russian poster urging open your eyes – against women being abused.
Over the past decade, the “Manosphere” — a loosely connected but increasingly influential network of blogs, forums, influencers, and online communities — has become a powerful vehicle for promoting traditional gender roles, male grievance politics, and opposition to feminism. Once considered fringe, its rhetoric has crept into mainstream politics, with some analysts crediting it with helping shape the cultural climate that helped elect Donald Trump in 2024. But its reach extends far beyond adult men: the Manosphere is now shaping how teenage boys think about gender, power, and identity — often before they’ve even had their first romantic relationship.
While the Manosphere’s impact on adult men has been widely studied, its encroachment into youth culture has received far less attention. Increasingly, Manosphere-aligned figures and communities are targeting boys aged 15 to 18, giving rise to what could be called the “Teenosphere”: a youth-focused, reactionary subculture that echoes the language, aesthetics, and grievances of its adult mentors. This emerging movement repackages anti-feminist and hypermasculine ideology in teen-friendly formats — viral TikToks, Discord memes, YouTube rants, and Reddit threads — making it both accessible and appealing to adolescent boys.
According to the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), the grooming of adolescent boys is “mimicking the white supremacist Active Club (AC) movement.”
This “’Youth Clubs’ network, consisting of at least 19 chapters representing 42 states, engages in the same real-world activism as the ACs, including MMA training, spreading neo-Nazi propaganda in public spaces, and attempting to recruit members online, including on TikTok.”
“Emerging in 2022, the Active Club movement is a white supremacist transnational network of ‘sports clubs’ first conceptualized by American neo-Nazi Robert Rundo and Russian neo-Nazi Denis Kapsutin, the latter a key MMA organizer who is banned from the Schengen Area in the European Union for his track record of hate and violence,” GPAHE recently reported.
“Active Clubs are small white supremacist cells, operating under Rundo’s ‘White Nationalism 3.0’ model, working at the local level and collaborating with numerous racist groups, including those with a penchant for violence, such as the Proud Boys, White Lives Matter (WLM), and Patriotic Front in the United States, Action Française and Identitarian groups in France, and the Hammerskins in Canada, Sweden, and Germany, creating alliances that strengthen the white supremacist movement globally. Shortly before Donald Trump’s inauguration, Active Clubs across the country called on him to follow through on his promise to conduct a mass migrant deportation operation.” (For more on the Active Clubs network, see “Active Clubs and Transnational Far-Right Extremism in 2024 and Beyond” @ extremism.gwu.edu/…; and “’Active club’ hate groups are growing in the U.S. — and making themselves seen” @ www.npr.org/…)
GPAHE pointed out that “The majority of Youth Clubs created channels on Telegram between February and June 2025, with a few set up in 2024. According to a post by an umbrella account for Youth Clubs, titled ‘United Youth,’ created on February 24, 2025, Youth Clubs are a ‘network of pro social young white men nationwide’ that act as an ‘activist,’ ‘nationalist,’ and ‘fraternal and fitness network.’
“At the time of publishing, Youth Clubs indicate that they only accept members between the ages of 15 and 18, and operate under the belief that ‘our (white) people are dying off and we are growing up in a world which does not care for us,’ referring to the racist, and deadly, ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory, which, like the regular Active Clubs, serves as an ideological framework for activism. Youth Clubs believe that ‘Jews,’ ‘liberal sycophants and homosexuals’ are all responsible for these supposed problems, and act to ‘fight back against these great globalist evils.’ United Youth also shared a quote by Rundo about starting the Rise Above Movement (RAM), a violent street gang which had members arrested for their actions during the racist Unite the Right riots in Charlottesville, Virginia.”
Some Youth Clubs are explicitly neo-Nazi, such as the Pacific North West (PNW) Youth Club and New England Youth Club.
GPAHE noted that the growing “Youth Club network serves as a sobering reminder of the ongoing radicalization of young men in the United States, particularly in this volatile political environment. These teenagers are drawing inspiration from violent neo-Nazis like Robert Rundo during a time when the Trump administration is mirroring policies advocated by neo-Nazis and galvanizing the far right to call for violence against their political enemies, making these Youth Clubs the manifestation of a new generation of hate.”
If we ignore the Manosphere’s growing influence on teenage boys, we risk allowing a generation shaped by misogyny, resentment, and grievance politics masquerading as empowerment. The online subculture is a recruiting ground for future ideologues, influencers, and voters. It will take a village made up of parents, educators, policymakers, and tech companies to be aware of and deal with the digital pipelines that funnel boys toward extremist content.
The post How the Toxic Manosphere is Grooming Adolescent Boys first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Berkowitz.