(A Portuguese translation of this essay was published here)
… A man appears before me in gray tones. He is turned towards the left and stares off into the distance with a winning smile, his upper teeth – glowing white, straight – showing through his parted lips. His dark hair is short and slicked back, no doubt held together with generous amounts of hair gel. His beard and moustache, perfectly trimmed, cover up the lower side of his face without skipping even a millimetre of skin, and his sideburns connect his haircut to his beard in a way that seems too good to be true.
Underneath his pronounced and bushy eyebrows, his slightly squinting eyes are looking towards a high spot somewhere on his right. The upper part of his large, muscular chest is evenly covered with small, dark hairs. Shadows are cast on his face and his body, accentuating his pumped-up physique. His nose looks firm and pointy, his jaw is impossibly angular, and his chin appears heavy, like a fist. He is so ripped even his face looks like its been working out.
He seems like he would tower over me, but his presence is not threatening, as his facial expression is one of joy and hope. It’s impossible to say what he is looking at that makes him so happy, as the dark and gray background reveals nothing of his surroundings. The image even seems to suggest that he has no surroundings. Maybe he does not need them. He seems untied to time and space; he simply is. If I had to describe him in one word, I would say: unburdened.
A second image: another man, strongly resembling the first, but with an eerie disconnect; his facial features are not quite the same. His entire body is now visible, filling most of the picture and occupying a central position within the frame, revealing the full scope of his muscular physique. He’s wearing nothing but a tiny black speedo, evoking images of Mr. Olympia.
He faces me now, staring straight ahead with confidence, head slightly tilted forwards, his face seeming ever more angular. A very faint smile around his lips, he looks determined more than anything else. He is balancing on his toes for some reason, his knees turned slightly outwards, but his pose seems as secure as a stone sculpture.
The muscles between his neck and shoulders are striking, rising up behind his back, almost like a hero’s cape. Underneath his perfectly toned and perfectly symmetrical chest, he is sporting an absurdly pronounced eight-pack. Not an ounce of fat can be spotted on his body, and veins cover his arms, stomach and legs.
His strong arms hang far from his torso with a slight curve at the elbow. His fingers are bent as if ready to grab something or form firmly into fists. His legs take the form of a reversed V, with his feet placed parallel to his shoulders, making him appear ready to burst into the air completely, ready to take off.
The background is gray and appears - again - to be almost like a void. The image suggests a neutral nothing-space, where the man appears as a supernatural being, god-like, exceeding the laws of nature. The only aspect of the image that suggests a physical space is the man’s shadow beneath his feet; but then again, the ground he’s standing on gradually dissolves into nothing.
In this image, he is both scary and adorable. If he were life-sized, or maybe even larger, his presence would undoubtedly be quite threatening. Still, something about his hyperbolic appearance, grab-ready hands and Barbie-like feet makes me want to pick him up and play with him like a military Ken doll. As such, he seems to me both omnipotent and completely harmless.
We are currently living through a revival of far-right and fascist politics. It is safe to say that the West is experiencing a descent towards fascism in real time: this is not a drill. At the same time, large numbers of men feel threatened in the opposite direction: they feel that feminism and multiculturalism are the true evil forces of today. These men often find themselves in the reactionary online spheres of the alt-right and the manosphere; movements that – among other similarities[1] – both idealize masculinity and express distinct and violent forms of misogyny, making them accomplices in their battle against a ‘common enemy’: women. The central role of masculinity in these spheres is often fueled by ‘male feelings of political, social and sexual disempowerment and wounded pride,’[2] resulting in toxic views on gender and power.
Within this context, some like to talk of a ‘crisis of masculinity’. The popular explanation of which is that in an era of increasing female emancipation, where women are now outperforming men in various academic and professional domains, combined with a cultural discourse that tends to highlight the problematic aspects of masculinity, many men are left uncertain and insecure about their role in society and feel that their position is no longer one of authority and power. Although this sociological explanation does make sense, I would argue that the crisis goes much deeper and may be inherent to masculinity, due to the impossible standards it structurally imposes on men. As many feminist scholars argue, ‘maybe the idea of masculinity itself is toxic.’[3] In other words, the crisis of masculinity is probably chronic, and phenomena such as the alt-right and the manosphere are just the latest symptoms.
Echoing the popular discourse around ‘fragile masculinity’, these men find the emancipation of women and diversification of society – that pose no actual threat to them whatsoever – ‘so existentially unsettling [...] that they resort to defend their masculine identities that are threatened with disintegration.’[4] They cling desperately to their masculinity, trying to shield their egos against a rapidly changing world, and often lash out in a violent gesture against what they perceive to be the source of that threat, often women or racialised (or foreignised) Others. Then, an online figure emerges to offer affective shelter and digital armour to these men, the Man, the Myth: Giga Chad.
Who is Giga Chad? He’s the digitally manipulated lovechild of Krista Sudmalis – a Russian artist – turned viral meme. A collection of images of a man who seems somehow more-than-man. His pumped-up physique and impossibly exaggerated facial features bear all the signs of Photoshop, but his pictures have a mythical quality to them. Never seen by anyone in real life, Giga Chad resides on the web, more of a digital entity than anything else.
His pictures are supposedly of a fitness model named Ernest Khalimov, who frequently appears in Sudmalis’ ‘Sleek’N’Tears’ photography project that revolves around the muscular human body.[5] Sudmalis’ style is immediately recognizable: her images are all in black and white, and her models are positioned against a gray background, wearing next to nothing, which puts all the focus on their extreme bodies. The models – men and women – often strike bodybuilding or fitness poses, flexing their arms and legs or showing off the things they can do with their bodies in acrobatic positions.
Giga Chad's journey into the manosphere began in 2017, when a link to Sudmalis’ @sleekntears Instagram account was posted on the 4chan /pol/ (‘politically incorrect’) board, accompanied by an image of Ernest Khalimov. From there, his image was posted on Lookism forums, where one user called him ‘ultra chad’. After initially being popularized within the incelosphere, Giga Chad went truly viral when he appeared in the ‘Average … fan vs. average … enjoyer’ meme format in 2021.[6] Now, several years later, he is still very much ‘alive and circulating’, which is quite rare as most memes are ‘viral’ only for short periods of time. Giga Chad thus seems to have touched a cultural nerve, or maybe he simply appeared in the right place at the right time?
From the start of Giga Chad’s rise to fame, people wondered whether Ernest Khalimov – supposedly the man behind the meme – is a real person. When users discovered his personal Instagram account, some saw this as proof of his existence.[7] In April of 2021, Khalimov finally acknowledged his images going viral in an Instagram post, humbly stating that ‘I have nothing to say to you, probably because I look much more interesting from your words. It's very flattering and overshadows my commonness.’ This only added to the myth of Giga Chad: he has beauty and brains, with one Redditor stating that he ‘seems like a pretty nice guy’. The chance that Khalimov’s images are truly representative of a real person out there is, however, extremely slim. His body is in impossible shape, and his images are, at the very least, heavily edited.
Sudmalis, his creator, sustains his ambiguous existence. When asked in an interview to introduce Giga Chad, she stated: ‘I heard he is an ideal man in appearance and inner content. His images are made by me.’ The keyword here might be ideal, in the sense that he exists only in idea. When asked whether Giga Chad is real, Sudmalis mysteriously states: ‘All I can say is that Ernest is as real as it can be, given the circumstances he is in.’ Of course, whether he is real or not is not a particularly interesting discussion, and in any case, she is right: Giga Chad is real in the sense that he exists online, exerts influence, and has the potential to set things in motion.
As Giga Chad’s image has now seeped into many corners of the internet, taking so many different forms and evoking so many different emotions, he escapes any singular signification. It is, however, within the manosphere, specifically the incelosphere, where his image seems to have caused the most stir. Incels are obsessed with what they perceive as a sexual-social hierarchy, and they use ‘Chad’ as a signifier for men who are at the top of this hierarchy. They view a Chad as ‘constituting the top decile in terms of genetic fitness.’[8] When they found Giga Chad, he was thus immediately adopted by them as the ultimate embodiment of the highest rank of the sexual-social order.
Giga Chad ‘exceeds the virility of Chad by being more virile, more angular, and more “alpha,”’[9], he is ‘the Incel “ubermensch”, the hyperreal and hyperrealised version of the supremely aspirational male.’[10] As such, his image simultaneously offers incels distress and comfort. As John Mercer and Clarissa Smith state: ‘GigaChad is social and sexual success embodied and simultaneously a potent avatar for its unattainability and unrealistic nature; to paraphrase Lauren Berlant (2011), the cruel optimism of the perfected body.’[11]
Giga Chad confirms the incels’ biggest fear: that they stand no chance in the dating field because men like him are their supposed competitors. He becomes proof of their belief system, which is so essential to their identity and, therefore, holds great emotional importance. There is something reassuring about finding out your biggest fear is true: at least you’re not crazy. Of course, this is paradoxical: being a photoshopped, digitally constructed image, Giga Chad serves as a fata morgana for incels, a fever dream that they take for reality. There is something almost masochistic about this; Giga Chad is a hallucinatory rival for these men that they obsess over to torture themselves. This type of behavior is exemplary for the incel psyche: they orchestrate a worldview in which they are constantly humiliated and oppressed by those around them and by phantastical enemy figures such as Giga Chad.
According to Jacob Johansson, Chad is also a racialised figure: ‘ultimately, the white male is most desired by incels and articulates itself in the construction of the fantasy of the Chad.’[12] Chad – portrayed as white, tall, extremely muscular, and broad-jawed – represents, for these incels, the ultimate fantasy of white masculinity, which they view, along with a muscular body, as the key to a successful (sex) life. The racial nature of Chad is evidenced by the fact that he has a black counterpart named Tyrone.[13] Research into the posts of incels suggests that the white Chad is often considered superior to Chads of other ethnicities.[14]
It’s not surprising that besides being adopted by the mano- and incelosphere Giga Chad is also popular in far-/alt-right circles. As an active user of social media, I knew of Giga Chad, but only gave him some more thought when I found his images incorporated in racist and neo-nazi memes while doing field research in the Dutch far-right Twitter/X sphere. I looked at several Dutch far-right accounts that post content mostly related to hatred against Muslims or other minorities, antisemitic conspiracy theories, and the glorification of Dutch (colonial) history, almost all of which incorporated memes, such as Giga Chad.
In one Twitter/X thread where user ‘critter’ (@BecomingCritter) said to name a ‘120, or even 130 IQ TV show’, ‘Hoeder van waarden’ (@HoederVanWaarde) replied: ‘It’s called Forum Inside’ and included a photoshopped image of Thierry Baudet’s face morphed onto Giga Chad’s body.[15] Thierry Baudet is the leader of Forum voor Democratie (FvD), a Dutch far-right political party that became popular in the period between 2019 and 2021.[16] During its moment of fame, the FvD managed to introduce novel alt-right sentiments into Dutch political discourse, successfully shifting the Overton window to the right through their discourse of conspiracy and even race theories.[17]
Another user, ‘Pier’ (@Pier_NL), used Giga Chad's image in an online discussion about racism, featuring Giga Chad holding a mug with Hitler's name and face on it while telling another user that ‘you too will board the train’, referencing the trains that brought Jews and other subaltern groups to the nazi death camps.[18] In another post, he has digitally decorated Giga Chad with an orthodox-Christian cross around his neck, turning him into something of a fascist dress-up doll.[19]
In these examples, Giga Chad functions as a sort of morpho-digital mask: wearing this mask shows others that you are based and unconquerable in online debate, no matter how politically incorrect you might be. Interestingly, though, Giga Chad works like this for all sides of the political spectrum, as he also appears in leftist memes.
On Know Your Meme, you will find ‘Chad-ifications’ of Hitler, Putin, Xi Jinping, and Zelensky, which shows how the concept of Giga Chad ultimately functions as a hollow or interchangeable symbol, stripped of any consistent or inherent meaning. This corresponds to the notion of memes being polyvocal: flexible, open-ended, and thus never inherently carrying one type of ideological content. However, due to his supremely muscular and hypermasculine appearance, Giga Chad is especially conducive to the masculinist and potentially fascist politics of the alt-right and manosphere. But in strict ideological terms, Giga Chad is an ambiguous figure at best, maybe impartial in essence, but certainly not innocent.
(Translation: This is literally just like Hitler!)
Catherine Tebaldi and Scott Burnett state that within fascist ideology, male bodies are instrumentalized under the guise of striving towards a new, fascist future: ‘physical and cultural renewal, rebirth, and recovery is effected through a specific aesthetic vision. Weight loss and muscle building are not merely about looking good but the recovery of masculinity – your own and the nations.’[20] They furthermore state that the ‘moral flavour’[21] of fascism is ‘hardness’.[22] They describe this hardness as being ‘both physical strength and intellectual determination, bringing together the sensory and ideological into an icon of idealised male dominance.’[23] Sound familiar? This combination of physical strength and intellectual determination is a perfect description of the Giga Chad archetype.
In fascism, this hardness functions in two ways. Firstly, the body is seen as an instrument, a tool for fascist battle. The male body serves in the army, defends the fascist nation, performs labor, and sacrifices itself: and to do all these things, it must be fit and muscular. But the body is also aestheticized and symbolized: strong and beautiful bodies serve as proof of the potency, power, and righteousness of fascism. As Tebaldi and Burnett state: ‘By becoming strong, hard, and hot, you can embody male beauty as the meaning and power that have been lost due to modern degeneracy,’[24] and as such, ideal male beauty is essentially instrumentalized to strengthen the argument for far-right ideology.[25]
It's no coincidence that Giga Chad, embodying ideal male beauty, is linked to the notion of being right or based. On the internet ‘Everybody knows that if you post a GigaChad picture, your opinion is correct. No combination of facts, logic, or rhetoric can stand up in the face of you posting that fateful, supremely masculine, yoked, black-and-white image of the most masculine man in the world.’[26]
One of the nodes where the alt-right and the manosphere diverge from traditional fascism lies in this dual attitude towards the body as instrument/symbol. These movements have largely let go of this instrumental function and tend to obsess over the body as an (aesthetic) symbol rather than ‘demand it act upon the world’.[27] This is why they don't have, or need, a physical army. In any case, their soldiers are behind computers - or maybe at the gym.
For the alt-right, manosphere and fascism, improving your physical strength through exercise is seen as an essential tool to achieve ‘full masculine potential’ and to dominate other men as well as women. According to Johansson, ‘White supremacism and how it is drawn on in the manosphere privileges the fit, white male body over anyone else’s.’[28] This dynamic is easily discernible in contemporary masculine culture, as the promotion of fitness and bodily strength is widespread, especially in (online) far-right spaces.
While working out is a physical activity, the transformation that right-wing fit boys are striving for is often more psycho-spiritual. The fit male body serves as a symbol for mental progression. Giga Chad, un-real, undead, lacking physical presence, floating in space, then, becomes an ideal archetype when male bodies become symbols rather than being earth-bound. He becomes a pure symbol of dominance, discipline, stoicism and genetic superiority. He does not need to march or shoot a gun to embody fascism; within fascist spheres, he becomes a perfect simulacrum of fascist masculinity.
In our current time, more than ever, we live in Baudrillardian hyperreality: a system in which signs no longer refer to reality but only to other signs and in which reality itself has come undone. Especially as our lives are so intertwined with the internet and digital culture: a self-referential system par excellence, a perfect simulation machine. Memes, of course, flourish in such a system: they circulate and mutate constantly, emerging in one corner of the internet and ending up somewhere else completely, often functioning within a purely memetic frame of reference. The ecosystem of memes is simulacral in its nature.
When we look at the alt-right and manosphere, we can see how these too are essentially simulacral structures, as they are based on worldviews that are not connected to any historical or empirical reality but which are entirely self-referential: their belief systems, symbols, and lingo simply build on top of each other: a self-referential structure resembling a house of cards.
For example, the alt-right loves the aesthetics of classical antiquity because, for them, this symbolizes the superiority of Western culture and the white race.[29] This is, however, a racist fantasy that is not grounded in reality: the sign supposedly represents a mythical past, but it is a simulacrum: there is no (mythical) past to lay claim to. Then, accelerated by internet culture, something like ‘fash-wave’ enters the scene: a musical genre and online aesthetics (often incorporating classical imagery) that parasitises on already existing simulacra.
Another example is that men of the manosphere believe in a sexual-social hierarchy, creating images that symbolize or personify this order. ‘Chad’ and ‘Stacy’ are two cartoon figures who supposedly represent the two types of people at the top of this sexual-social order. As signs, they are then inseminated with other signs. Stacy supposedly personifies modern women as being superficial, calculating, and hypergamous. Chad supposedly personifies successful men as being domineering, muscular, and unemotional. For the manosphere, these symbols represent a social reality. But instead they mask the fact that such a reality, and in fact any 'fundamental sexual-social reality', does not exist at all: sexual-social hierarchies are too complex and diverse to be represented in such figures.
Within the toxically masculine context of the alt-right and manosphere, a figure like Giga Chad functions as a final stage simulacrum. Initially, he might have been a distorted or photoshopped representation of a fitness model, but after becoming Giga Chad and being inseminated with (already distorted) signs of hypermasculinity, he has lost any ties to reality. He now simply reflects other signs that refer to signs that refer to signs while circulating the simulacral ecosystem of the meme-net.
The alt-right and manosphere are thus simulacral in the sense that they no longer relate to empirical or historical realities but instead operate as closed-off, self-referential systems of signs. For these men, however, these signs are ‘realer than real’. Their worldview is experienced as true reality while masking that it doesn’t actually exist: there is no terrorizing feminism, there is no great replacement, there is no war on men.
Meanwhile, hyperreal symbols such as Giga Chad are embraced as more representative of reality than reality itself, and they exert a real influence. Baudrillard writes about the ‘precession of simulacra’, meaning that life starts to imitate simulacral reality.[30] This relates to the way a hyperreal figure like Giga Chad influences beauty standards, resulting in strange and extreme forms of men enhancing their appearance, such as the ‘mewing’ trend.[31]
There's an obsession here with what they perceive as 'distortions of reality'. The red pill discourse is organized around the belief that feminist, progressive worldviews are, in fact, evil appearances that distort reality, and that true reality can be found in their worldview – in which (white) men are the ones who are oppressed – once you become redpilled. Redpillers seem to intuitively sense the postmodern, simulacral situation we are in and then defensively create their own reality, stating that yes, we are living in an illusionary world, but WE can see through the illusion – while, of course, there is nothing on the other side. They only create a new, oppositional illusion to the one they experience. They feel that they have pierced through a simulacrum, only to create a counter-simulacrum, to quench their thirst for the real, maybe? According to Jean Baudrillard, the disappearance of the real will be accompanied by a hysterical obsession over the real, and redpill discourse is a prime example of this.[32] This hysteria is also mirrored in the discourse on Giga Chad as it mainly revolves around the question: IS HE REAL?
If we look at our current political situation through a Baudrillardian lens, specifically the rise of fascist forces and tendencies, we may come to understand why today’s fascism is often not recognised as such. We might say that fascism today hits different. As Baudrillard wrote, simulacra have become substitutes for reality itself. As such, politics is substituted by simulacra of politics; power is no longer real power but substituted by its operational double or performance of power.[33] In other words, it looks like a duck and swims like a duck, but it's not a duck.[34]
Baudrillard writes about the disappearance of power: ‘Power itself has for a long time produced nothing but the signs of its resemblance. And at the same time, another figure of power comes into play: that of a collective demand for signs of power – a holy union that is reconstructed around its disappearance.’[35] Power has become a power of the (collective) imaginary, of the narrative, and of gestures.[36] When Baudrillard said that ‘the Gulf War did not take place’, he meant that the actual event was substituted – in the collective experience of reality – by a constructed, distorted image of the war as the media broadcasted it.
The image, the simulacrum, is a tool of power. The nazis already knew this. ‘Traditional’ fascism has always relied on myth and symbolism, functioning via structures of intense affective power that are mediated through (mainly) image-based propaganda. As such, fascism has never been truly linked to material reality: reality is not important for fascists. However, traditional fascism still needed physical force and violence to gain power, and this may be different today.
In hyperreality, fascism depends less on real-life events but more on (digital) signs and symbols. This does not mean, however, that fascism has become harmless: on the contrary, a hyperreal fascism, or hyperfascism, might pose an even greater danger, as it does not rely on ‘traditional’ power structures in the physical world to exert power and influence. It is a flowing fascism: flowing through databases and online spheres, but nonetheless affecting bodies and minds, dividing and polarising us. Note the dangerous combination of affect and global, networked systems here. The affective structures of the Third Reich, mediated through the print press, radio broadcasts, and film, will seem ‘cute’ in comparison to the incomprehensible cyber-reach of contemporary fascism. Hyperfascism still spreads hatred and (symbolic) violence, but it no longer needs boots on the ground to do so – the Freikorps of today are on Reddit.
The formation of fascism is accelerating, and its playing field is becoming larger: Pepe the Frog could only have become a fascist symbol in hyperreality. As a result, fascism doesn’t become less dangerous, but it might become weirder. Its manifestations become stranger, more surreal. Elon Musk’s nazi salute leaves us in bewilderment; the things we see on the news make us question reality every day. Showing itself in not-seen-before forms, fascism becomes both harder to identify, harder to catch, as well as more out in the open than ever. This may seem like a contradiction, but confusion about what fascism is and how it functions works in fascism’s favor; this is important. Fascist movements, like the alt-right, can flourish when the collective moral consciousness is busy being confused and distracted. This might be one of the reasons why the alt-right has embraced the internet and meme culture and why they embrace a seemingly absurd figure like Giga Chad.
As mythologized simulacral image Giga Chad becomes a potent(ial) vessel for hyperfascism. He circulates the simulacral ecosystem that is the internet and adopted by the fascist spheres of the alt-right and manosphere Giga Chad has become a sign of male superiority and even nazi race theory. He starts to embody not only the incel fantasy of a sexual-social order but also the broader fascist ideology that glorifies the white male muscular body as a vessel of control, order, and potential violence. Of course, this appropriation and transformation of Giga Chad is not random. In perfect fascist fashion, Giga Chad combines a sense of mythic masculinity with a specific affective structure: that of the impenetrable male.
In his groundbreaking work Männerphantasien (1977), Klaus Theweleit analysed the ‘proto-fascist’ psyche of the Freikorps soldiers, the paramilitary groups who were active in post-WWI Germany. To enter the psyches of Freikorps soldiers, Theweleit analysed the diaries, letters, and literature written by these soldiers. He read their writings symptomatically, to detect how these men imagined their bodies, women, the nation, enemies, and themselves. He describes how the soldiers’ egos seem to be ‘fragmented and less manifested than in other subjects’ and how, as a result, the men are terrified of losing the little stability and firmness they have, of falling apart and disintegrating.[37] In the army, the soldiers then develop body armor, theorised by Theweleit as a psychological and physical defence structure – a shield both emotional and muscular – to protect the soldiers’ fragile ego against anything fluid, vulnerable, or uncontrollable.
The armored body is closed off from emotional or sexual vulnerability and becomes a sort of fortress in which the ego feels safe. Women – associated by these men with fluidity and sexuality – become an enemy. In the army and in fascism, the soldiers find a structure that reflects and amplifies their own internal logic of control, invulnerability and violence, and they undergo a merging process with these structures. Theweleit calls this self-merging: the men simultaneously dissolve into a larger body and retreat deeper into themselves, armoring themselves against any outside influence.
Manosphere men similarly experience women and feminism as a threat to their male ego and commit (symbolic) violence against them in a defensive counter-attack through the narratives, discourses, and memes they spread online. The alt-right, a movement that is like a partner in crime for the manosphere through their shared misogyny, performs the same tactics. Just as Theweleit read the Freikorps writings symptomatically in an attempt to unravel their psychic structures, Giga Chad can be read as a product, or illustration, of the male psyche of the online men of the manosphere and alt-right.
Online, every image serves as a potential platform for identification. Internet users often utilize digital avatars, personas, or archetypes to identify with or hide behind. For example, the profile picture resembles a digital mask or costume. In meme culture, there’s also a consistent trend to say ‘this is me’ in reaction to images portraying cute animals, funny-looking guys, gorgeous models, or whatever, really. A baby rabbit is ‘who you're being mean to’, Megan Fox in sweatpants and a tank top is ‘me going to the supermarket’.
Giga Chad functions in this same way: as an online persona who is up for grabs in the sense that anyone can ‘be’ him in a type of digital, hyperreal roleplay. This identification process works on a symbolic level. Just like a baby rabbit symbolizes a sense of innocence, sweetness and whimsy, Giga Chad symbolises self-confidence, self-sufficiency, and stability. His endless smile, confident glance and improbably strong physique all add to this image. Just as his images suggest that he exists outside of time and space, he also appears to have achieved complete emotional self-assurance and self-containment. Negative or distressing affects bounce off his body, never impact it or settle in it. Giga Chad is a stoic icon, immune to vulnerability, criticism, or failure, detached from the real world and its threats - in one word, impenetrable.
For men whose egos are threatened and fragile, Giga Chad serves as an ideal phantasmatic identification point. For these men, he is a digital mask and affective shield; body armor personified through the hyperreal logic of online culture. The identification might even be so strong that men can repress actual emotions by pretending they are not affected by them. In this process, a digital figure like Giga Chad functions as a digi-psychological defense mechanism, similar to body armor. Giga Chad, then, embodies a sort of digital safe-space for these men.
The implications of Giga Chad as an affective shield are not necessarily toxic or fascist. Normies like Giga Chad, too. He may have been crowned ‘Giga Chad’ by the incel community, but he has become so much more than that. He shows up in leftist memes just as he does in rightwing memes, and there is even a distinct sidetrack of his character as being intrinsically wholesome, unproblematic, and helpful to others.
Due to his hyperbolic appearance, Giga Chad could also be a caricature of and maybe even undermine the idealization of hypermasculinity, but the zeitgeist is not right for this: hypermasculinity is taken seriously by most, men as well as women. The caricaturing of Giga Chad is, nevertheless, already happening online, alongside his functioning as an icon of hypermasculinity and even hyperfascism. The hyperreal online is a space in which everything happens everywhere all at once. Giga Chad is so many things, even a crypto coin.[38]
As the sociopolitical compass points towards fascism, we need to be on our guard. Giga Chad functions as the fantasy endpoint of fascist masculinity: hot, hard, impenetrable. Its body armor, personified and digitized, is refusing any external emotional or bodily intrusion. Yet, unlike the historical Freikorps soldiers, Giga Chad is an image without a body. Giga Chad presents an affective structure – he’s the projection of an ideal male form that exists to protect against the chaotic, pluralist world that threatens the male ego through feminism and diversity. And when masculinity armors itself, violence tends to follow.
Merthe Voorhoeve (2000) is a writer and final editor of Simulacrum Magazine. She holds a bachelor's degree in Dutch language and culture and Art history and is currently enrolled in the research master Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. She is interested in memes and digital culture and how these are shaping our contemporary moment.
Notes:
[1] Within the alt-right as well as the manosphere, racism and antisemitism are (actively) present, though this type of bigotry plays a more central role in the alt-right, as the manosphere is primarily concerned with gender roles. Another core similarity is their reliance on genetic determinism and pseudo-science as ideological groundwork.
[2] Hermansson et al., “Masculinity and Misogyny in the Alternative Right”, The International Alt Right, 190.
[3] Sam De Boise, “Editorial: is masculinity toxic?”, NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies Volume 14, Issue 3 (2019), 150.
[4] Johansson, “The sexual revolution”, Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere, 69.
[5] Know Your Meme, “GigaChad”, https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gigachad.
[6] Know Your Meme, “GigaChad”, https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gigachad.
[7] u/quaintif, “gigachad is real, and humble and he seems like a pretty nice guy. he's an actual Chad.”, Reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/MadeMeSmile/comments/tx0eop/gigachad_is_real_and_humble_and_he_seems_like_a/.
[8] Wikipedia, “Chad (slang)”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_(slang)#cite_note-11.
[9] Catherine Tebaldi, Scott Burnett, “The Science of Desire: Beauty, Masculinity, and Ideology on the Far Right”, Journal of Right-Wing Studies, Volume 2, Issue 2 (2024), 27.
[10] John Mercer, Clarissa Smith, “Aspirational Bodies: Health, Fitness and the Body Project”, Sexualised Masculinity: Men’s Bodies in 21st Century Media Culture, 1st edition, (London: Routledge, 2025), 90.
[11] Mercer, Smith, “Aspirational Bodies”, 91.
[12] Johansson, “Incels and fantasies of destroying/desiring the other”, Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere, 111.
[13] Kim Ebensgaard Jensen, "Cultural Categorisations of Men in a Notorious Online Community", The Handbook of Cultural Linguistics, (Springer: Singapore, 2024), 368.
[14] Ebensgaard Jensen, “Cultural Categorizations”, 368.
[15] Forum Inside is a podcast on YouTube, produced by the FvD and featuring Thierry Baudet and other FvD members, often in conversation with other different rightwing guest-speakers.
[16] The period of the Covid-19 crisis (2020 – 2022) saw an acceleration of far-right and alt-right thought, and the FvD seized this opportunity to ride the tidal wave of anti-government and anti-‘globalism’ sentiment that followed.
[17] Already in 2017, Thierry Baudet stated that Dutch people were being 'homeopathically diluted' by 'mixing' them with people from all around the world. During his victory speech in 2019, Baudet claimed that the very people who were 'supposed to protect us' were destroying the 'boreal' world. Journalists pointed to the fascist undertones of the word 'boreal'. Nazis like Heinrich Himmler believed that the Aryan race originated from a mythical northern province: 'Hyperborea'.
[18] Pier (@Pier_NL), X, 8 October 2024, https://x.com/Pier_NL/status/1843526525486026938.
[19] Pier (@Pier_NL), X, 30 January 2025, https://x.com/Pier_NL/status/1885068561439248402. Eastern/Orthodox Christianity is particularly popular within the alt-right due to associations with strong conservatism and 'traditionalism'.
[20] Tebaldi, Burnett, “The Science of Desire”, 40.
[21] The aligning of distinct physical and psychical qualia into a single term.
[22] Tebaldi, Burnett, “The Science of Desire”, 20.
[23] Tebaldi, Burnett, “The Science of Desire”, 20.
[24] Ibidem., 21.
[25] Ibidem., 43.
[26] Marlon Ettinger, “Who is GigaChad?”, Dailydot.com, https://www.dailydot.com/memes/gigachad-meme/.
[27] Josh Vandiver, “Alt-Virilities: Masculinism, Rhizomatics, and the Contradictions of the American Alt-Right”, Politics, Religion & Ideology, Volume 21, Issue 2, (2020), 174.
[28] Johansson, “The sexual revolution”, 64.
[29] Hermansson et al., “Art-Right: Weaponising Culture”, The International Alt-Right, 1st Edition, (London: Routledge, 2021), 109.
[30] Baudrillard, “The Precession of Simulacra”, 1.
[31] 'Mewing' is an online trend that claims to be a "do-it-yourself facial restructuring method". It is mainly practised by young men who wish to enhance their facial beauty by strengthening their jaw and making their chin appear more pronounced. Mewing is an essential aspect of the 'looksmaxxing' phenomenon, widespread among incels but not solely reserved for this group. In the incelosphere, there is a conviction that 'jaw is law,' meaning that as a man, your jaw plays an essential part in your appearance and attractiveness.
[32] Baudrillard, “The Precession of Simulacra”, 26.
[33] Baudrillard, “The Precession of Simulacra”, 21-22.
[34] Importantly, it does, however, still function as a duck. It's still doing fascism.
[35] Baudrillard, “The Precession of Simulacra”, 23.
[36] In the Netherlands, we see this very clearly. Wilders, leader of the PVV, constantly conjures up images of a country in crisis, specifically a refugee crisis, which supposedly has the nation and its people in a chokehold. In his speeches he rings the alarm bells, describing refugees as a catastrophic tidal wave, and his party as the only one who dares to speak this 'truth' and who will combat this. Of course, now that his party is actually in power, nothing actually changes. Everyone is angry, and nothing happens. Of course, in a sense, this is also intrinsic to fascism: it needs an (inner) enemy to function, which is why a figure like Wilders is invested in keeping the 'crisis' alive. With Baudrillard, we can describe Wilders' politics as a form of deterrence: he constantly speaks of crisis and turmoil not to take actual action but to prevent anything real from happening.
[37] Johansson, “Male fascist bodies”, 42.