When the younger brother of a household name took to YouTube last year, few could have predicted the tsunami that would follow. Now, with a million subscribers and a platform that preaches a gospel of male empowerment, alpha dominance, and suspicion of feminism, British mental health charities are raising the alarm. This is not simply another online guru. This is a radicalisation pipeline, they warn, and it is targeting the most vulnerable demographic: young men in search of identity.
The story begins, as so many do, in the shadow of a more famous sibling. But where others might have retreated into privacy, this brother – let us call him X – chose a different path. He began by dispensing what seemed like benign advice on fitness and self-discipline. His voice was calm, his aesthetics slick, his references to stoicism and Jordan Peterson carefully curated. Within months, the algorithm had done its work. The comments section filled with lonely teenagers and disaffected twentysomethings who felt abandoned by a society that, in their view, only cared about women and minorities.
Then came the pivot. X started to talk about the “feminisation” of culture, the “war on men”, and the need for a “red pill” awakening. His rhetoric grew sharper, his enemies list longer: leftists, feminists, the media, the “soft” men who had betrayed their gender. He offered his followers a simple, seductive narrative: you are the victim, but you are also the hero. Take back your power. Reject the system. Follow me.
Charities such as Mind and the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) have watched this trajectory with growing concern. “We are seeing a sharp rise in young men expressing feelings of anger, betrayal, and a sense of being under attack,” a spokesperson for CALM told me. “These influencers offer a sense of belonging, but it comes at a cost. They are selling a worldview that isolates and radicalises. We have had callers who repeat the exact talking points from these videos, verbatim. They speak of women as adversaries, of society as a conspiracy. It is deeply worrying.”
The phenomenon is not limited to the British Isles. Across Europe and North America, a network of similar figures is thriving. They share aesthetics and talking points, but X has a unique advantage: the Hollywood connection. It grants him a veneer of legitimacy, a foot in the door that other manosphere messiahs lack. When mainstream outlets profile him, they mention his brother’s blockbusters, not the misogyny in his videos. The result is a slow creep into respectability.
But what of the young men themselves? I spoke to a former follower, a 23-year-old from Manchester who asked to remain anonymous. “I was lost after university,” he said. “No job, no girlfriend, just a lot of debt. X’s videos made me feel powerful. He said we were the real oppressed class. It felt good, for a while. But then I started to see enemies everywhere. My mother, my sisters, my female friends. I cut them off. I was alone, but I felt superior. It took a breakdown to see how toxic it was.”
This is the human cost. Behind the screens and the algorithms, there are real people being reshaped, their world views narrowed, their relationships strained. The charities are right to call it radicalisation. The language is stark, but so is the evidence. Young men are not simply being entertained. They are being recruited. And the brother of a movie star is standing at the front of the room, offering them a new faith. The question is: who will offer them a better one?
