Wednesday’s Child: Something in the Water

I remember reading somewhere that the Japanese, whose diet in historically rich in soy, have a preternaturally high level of estrogen in their bodies. Soybeans have a high concentration of isoflavones, plant estrogens known as phytoestrogens and similar in function to the human hormone. Soy isoflavones, notably genistein, bind to estrogen receptors in the body.

The Germans, apparently, have a feminizing agent of their own, which is beer. The use of hops in the brewing process accounts for the presence of phytoestrogens in the foaming stein, and some years ago a phytoestrogen called 8-prenylnaringenin was discovered in hops. This, in fact, is the most active phytoestrogen isolated by biochemists to date, some fifty times more potent than the genistein found in soy.

The point being made by the author of the article, which struck me as worthy of note, was that the populations of the two main Axis powers in the last world war had been chemically primed for the sort of submission to the leader which is the salient feature of Nazism and most other authoritarian cults. It is what Jonestown had in common with Berchtesgaden and the Stockholm bank robbery had in common with “Die Fahne hoch!” resounding through Munich’s beer halls.

I realize this is a spacious field for generalization, though perhaps less fertile than the one sown by Orwell when he declared that “all tobacconists are fascists.”   Female hormones in drinking water have long been acknowledged to cause obesity and sterility in men throughout the civilized world, so it is hardly outlandish to suggest that they have some bearing on voter behavior in Europe and America.

The Stockholm syndrome – when men, to say nothing of women, comport themselves as Stepford Wives to their captors – is never too far afield if one spends some time on X, formerly known as Twitter, as I now do. The syndrome, psychologists tell us, is known not only for the captive’s affection for the captor, but also for his wariness of whatever external authority or agency, such as the police, which threatens that newfound love.

There is, for instance, a fellow called Jackson Hinkle, with two million followers on X, who has visited Putin’s Russia and reported that the “patriotic will” of the people there is identical to the sentiment found in the American heartland. Describing himself as an “American Conservative Marxist-Leninist,” Hinkle is the originator and chief proponent of what he calls “MAGA Communism,” eulogized in a magazine fittingly called Vice as “a swirl of social conservatism, patriotism and subversive energy.” It should not surprise that this subversively energetic lad first found fame as a fiery environmentalist, because, in the end, it hardly matters if one’s captor is named Greta, Vladimir, or Donald. The main task, as you espouse the cause, is to choose the wedding dress.

Another Stepford Wife who fascinates me is Nick Fuentes, “a Trump cultist,” as he introduces himself in a recent video. Fuentes is banned from Twitter and relies on “burner” accounts to make his statements. “I am a soldier for Donald Trump,” he says. “I serve at the personal pleasure of Donald Trump, my supreme leader. I am part of the paramilitary wing of the Trump movement. I am part of the Revolutionary Guard. I do not answer to the Pentagon. I do not answer to the civilian government. I am the praetorian guard of Donald Trump. If Donald Trump ordered me to do an extrajudicial killing, I would perform it.”  All this fawning should not go to the presidential candidate’s head, however, as there’s hardly a strongman, from Hitler to Putin, whom Fuentes does not admire – or love, as he puts it.

Well, and what of the presidential candidate himself?  During the past week on the campaign trail, Trump has described Xi, Kim Jong Un, and Putin as “great.” He, too, loves them. “We fell in love,” he has said of Kim Jong Un. To suppose that what this man most wants is to become a dictator is to misapprehend the obvious. What he wants most is to be captured by a dictator – as Nick Fuentes, for one, has been captured by him – swept off his feet, ravished, and in the end lawfully affianced. He may call it “making a deal” – pretending to be a hardboiled businessman is a lifelong habit with him – but in this unmistakably feminine yielding to the totalitarian temptation what one actually sees, to borrow W. S. Gilbert’s merciless guffaw, is “a case that bubbles over with poetical emotion.”

It’s something in the water, I tell you.