Right-wing YouTuber’s daycare hoax reveals bizarre MAGA obsession: analyst
A right-wing YouTuber's "psychosexual’ obsession amid allegations that he perpetuated a fraud hoax at Somali daycare facilities has revealed MAGA's misogynistic attack on childcare and women, an analyst wrote Monday.
Salon's Amanda Marcotte wrote how Nick Shirley has attempted to use his virginity as a "nonsense" justification for his allegations.
"The YouTuber who moved from 'prank' videos to the more lucrative world of creating MAGA disinformation apparently believes that sexual inexperience is an armor against accusations that he’s a liar," Marcotte wrote.
A "video investigation" by Shirley, which was viewed tens of millions of times on YouTube and X, suggested that childcare facilities were taking funds from the government but don't actually have any children inside them. In the video, Shirley walked up to day care centers with another man, David, and apparently was surprised that he wasn't welcomed inside the locations.
"This isn’t proof there are no children," Marcotte wrote. "Ideally, not answering the door is how any responsible caregiver would respond to strange, yelling men demanding to come in and film kids. But conservative audiences, ever eager to hear Black people are committing crimes, ignored that logic and spread the video rapidly online."
He then made a bizarre excuse when he was accused of making up the allegations.
"I’m a virgin. I don’t have sex with random girls," he said on PBD Podcast. "You’re not gonna catch me on those sexual allegation charges."
"Shirley stands accused of lying for racist reasons, so his 'but I’m a virgin' defense is irrational," Marcotte wrote.
But she said Shirley's unfounded accusations against the daycares could be traced to how he — and MAGA — views masculinity and gender roles, Marcotte wrote.
'It makes more sense, in a psychosexual way, in light of the right’s long-standing fear and loathing of day cares. After all, the scandal Shirley is exploiting isn’t really about day cares," Marcotte wrote.
The "latest obsession" has more to do with MAGA's ideology.
"These businesses were picked almost certainly because Shirley and his colleagues have tapped into the long-standing tendency of paranoid reactionaries to make day cares the subject of conspiracy theories. Along with birth control and abortion — whose providers are also smeared constantly with right-wing lies — day care is loathed on the right for allowing women to work instead of being financially dependent on a husband," Marcotte wrote.
And that's not the first time conservative conspiracy theories have relied on this trope.
"But bringing his sexuality and views on gender relations into the discussion — when no one else has done so — suggests that those issues aren’t far from mind, either," Marcotte added. "The fixation on 'purity' is a common fascist obsession, manifesting in backwards fantasies of racial and sexual purity."