In the 1999 film The Matrix, the protagonist, offered a blue pill that would allow him to continue living as before and a red pill that would show him “how deep the rabbit hole goes,” famously chooses the latter and learns that he lives in an elaborate simulation. The derivative term “red-pilling” has since entered the lexicon, first by way of the early-2010s “manosphere” — an Internet subculture dedicated to pick-up artistry and men’s-rights advocacy in which to be red-pilled was to understand that women leverage their sexual power to secure things they are biologically conditioned to want — and …
This article appears as “Inhuman Ideologies” in the January 25, 2021, print edition of National Review.
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