What do the ‘MGTOW’ search tags attached to Pierre Poilievre’s YouTube videos mean?

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is facing backlash after a report found that his official YouTube videos included a tag that is used by a misogynist online movement, one that advocates that men separate themselves from women and from a society that has been corrupted by feminism.

According to a Global News analysis, 50 of the last videos published on Poilievre’s YouTube channel included the hidden tag “#mgtow” — an acronym for “Men Going Their Own Way.” Though the tag was hidden from public view, it helped promote Poilievre’s videos to those who are interested in the movement.

Experts consider the MGTOW movement a part of the male supremacist ideology and warn that it overlaps with alt-right and white supremacist movements. Evidence shows that both Alek Minassian — who killed 10 people by driving a van into pedestrians in Toronto — and the teenager who attacked a spa in North York in 2020 were familiar with MGTOW and its ideology.

In the House of Commons on Thursday, Poilievre faced heavy criticism from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other Liberal MPs, who accused him of courting misogynist communities to expand his online brand.

Poilievre, who claims he was not aware of the tags, did not apologize, but told the House that he corrected the problem and condemns “all forms of misogyny.”

“I condemn all forms of misogyny, including when the prime minister fired the very first female Indigenous attorney general.”

What is “MGTOW”

The origin of the movement is murky, though it is believed to have formed online in the early 2000s as a group with libertarian origins.

Broadly, the MGTOW movement believes that society has been irreversibly corrupted by feminism, resulting in a systemic bias against men and their viewpoints. In response, proponents of MGTOW present themselves as “male separatists” who seek to remove themselves from the negative influence of women entirely.

“Women are essentially portrayed as parasites riding on the coattails of men, who have, throughout history, been responsible for ‘far greater miracles of science, discovery and human endeavor,’” wrote Laura Bates in The Guardian. “By shaking women off, it is explained, men will be free to pursue ever higher achievements.”

The MGTOW movement, which is largely comprised of white, heterosexual males, gained traction on Reddit throughout the 2010s, with subreddits attracting tens of thousands of followers.

In August 2021, Reddit banned the two main MGTOW subreddits for violating rules about inciting violence or promoting hate.

TikTok also banned the MGTOW hashtag in 2021, Vice News reported.

“The Manosphere”

Experts consider MGTOW one of the four main groups that form “the manosphere” — a collection of online websites and groups that promote masculinity, misogyny and an opposition to feminism.

The term emerged in the 2010s to encapsulate issues championed by “men’s rights activists” (MRA), who believe that family law and social institutions discriminate against men, as well as toxic online behaviours surrounding gaming culture.

In addition to MGTOW and MRAs, “the manosphere” also includes “Pick-up artists” (PUAs), who use predatory tactics to coax women into having sex with them; and “incels” — or involuntary celibates — a violent and misogynist ideology made up of men who blame women and feminism for denying them sex.

Incel ideology has been linked to dozens of murders and assaults over the past decade, including a shooting rampage by Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old self-described incel who murdered six people in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 2014, and the van attack by Alek Minassian in Toronto in 2018.

However, experts note that there is considerable overlap between groups operating in “the manosphere.”

Stephanie Carvin, a former national security analyst for the federal government and a professor of international relations at Carleton University, told the Star that the groups that make up “the manosphere” are united by at least three factors: a culture of grievance, a conspiratorial worldview and extreme misogyny.

“(These groups oppose) the idea of women’s rights, or the idea of support for women,” she explained. “They believe that women are at best secondary citizens, and at worst from which to attain sexual pleasure.”

According to a report by computer scientists released in 2020, there has been a significant migration between groups within “the manosphere”: “Every year since 2015, around 8 per cent of MRA or MGTOW members appear to have become more radicalized and joined incel groups online.

“I wouldn’t discount movements that maybe don’t reach the level of violence, but still do convey messages of male supremacy, male domination, and even to some extent, white supremacy or white domination,” Irfan Chaudhry director of the Office of Human Rights, Diversity and Equity at MacEwan University in Edmonton told the Star. “These groups have similar ideological underpinnings, and there is tons of potential for overlap.”

“These aren’t organized, cohesive groups.” Chaudry said. “It’s an ideolgoy, and ideology can be very, very dangerous when it’s not kind of met with more scrutiny or a counter-narrative to help balance out a perspective.”

The link between MGTOW and violence in Canada

In June, Minassian was sentenced to life in prison after a downtown court heard the harrowing accounts of more than 20 people who had their lives shattered by one of Canada’s worst acts of mass murder.

Though Minassian did not testify at the trial, the court heard hours of interviews he gave to police and doctors, where he spoke of the various factors that may have motivated the attack.

As the Star’s Alyshah Hasham reported, Minassian cited various motives for his attack, including fame, social isolation, a long-time obsession with school shooters and mass killers, including Elliot Rodger.

During one conversation about his motivation for the attack with forensic scientist Alexander Westphal, Minassian admitted that he was familiar with the MGTOW movement and its ideology.

In Feb. 2020, a 17-year-old boy carrying a 17-inch sword etched with the misogynistic phrase “Thot Slayer” and a note that said “Long Live the Incel Rebellion” walked into a North York erotic massage parlour and immediately stabbed receptionist Ashley Arzaga to death before he was disarmed by another woman, according to agreed facts read in court.

The attacker, whose identity is protected under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, entered a plea of guilty to first-degree murder and attempted murdered.

When the police searched the teen’s laptop, they found his computer search history included many terms related to “the manosphere,” including “incel MGTOW” and several other searches related to incel ideology.

The connection between “the manosphere” and other far-right actors

Carvin believes that the online subcultures that make up the “manosphere” offer spaces for far-right actors to target young, predominantly white males who are primed for further radicalization to violence.

She argues that the misogynistic, conspiratorial and grievance-based beliefs of “the manosphere” overlap with the beliefs held by most far-right groups including neo-Nazis, alt-right, Western Chauvinist as well as Christian fascist movements.”

“At a lot of these groups kind of ebb and flow into one another,” she told the Star. “There’s no hard line. The challenge is that a lot of these (far-right) groups are opportunistic and will try to find these other greivance-based movements with a view of trying to get them to join perhaps more far-right organizations.”

Carvin also believes that “manosphere” groups and most far-right groups share anti-2SLGBTQQA+ ideas, which she fears may increase gender-based violence or targeted hate crimes.

A danger inside the Conservative Party?

As pressure mounts on Poilievre to provide an explanation and apology for the YouTube scandal, the Conservative Party has called off an internal probe.

Chaudry believes that the MGTOW tag was likely included in the YouTube videos as a strategic tactic to rally support for Poilievre in the lead-up to the Conservative leadership race.

“We can’t tolerate our politicians and federal leaders even trying to flirt with these types of ideologies, because they’re quite dangerous,” he said.

Carvin told the Star she is willing to believe that Poilievre was not aware of the tag. But that doesn’t allay her concerns.

“To me, it’s almost more an insider’s threat issue,” she said. “If someone in your campaign is taking on these hashtags because they think that they are going to appeal to this kind of highly-toxic grievance-based movement, that is to me, a concern you need to take seriously.”

Richie Assaly is a Toronto-based digital producer for the Star. Reach him via email: rassaly@thestar.ca