Jack Donovan

Jack Donovan (born 1974) is an American far-right writer and activist. A self-described masculinist, Donovan was an influential figure in the alt-right until he disavowed the movement in 2017. He has at various times advocated male supremacy, white nationalism, fascism, and the political disenfranchisement of women. He later dropped out of college and became a manual laborer.

Career

Books Donovan has authored several books about masculinity and masculism.

Donovan published Androphilia: A Manifesto: Rejecting the Gay Identity, Reclaiming Masculinity under the pseudonym Jack Malebranche in 2006. In this book, he advocates for a societal structure he calls "the gang" or "The Brotherhood": small groups of men banding together for survival against the outside world.

He published a collection of essays and speeches titled A Sky Without Eagles in 2014, and the books Becoming a Barbarian in 2016 and A More Complete Beast in 2018.

Other work Donovan wrote about topics related to Satanism for Lust Magazine, a sexuality magazine created by members of the Church of Satan. In 2007, Donovan (using the Malebranche pen name) edited and published Lust Magazine: The Archives 2003–2006, a collection of selected works from the magazine.

Donovan used to write for the online anti-feminist journal, The Spearhead, which was published from 2009 to 2014.

Donovan was an early writer for AlternativeRight.com, an online magazine founded by Richard B. Spencer that was published from 2010 to 2012. Donovan also wrote for another of Spencer's publications, Radix Journal, for Jared Taylor's American Renaissance, and for Greg Johnson's Counter-Currents.

Donovan spoke at the American Renaissance conference in 2014. He also spoke in 2013 and 2015 at the National Policy Institute (NPI), Spencer's white supremacist think-tank. The Daily Stormer's Andrew Anglin led a boycott of the 2015 National Policy Institute conference after learning that Donovan was speaking, opposing the conference's choice to invite a homosexual speaker. Michael Hill of the League of the South refused to share a stage with Donovan at a NPI conference because of Donovan's sexuality.

In Milo Yiannopoulos's March 2016 Breitbart article, "An Establishment Conservative's Guide to the Alt-Right", he relied on Donovan's writings alongside those of Richard B. Spencer and Steve Sailer.

Donovan has spoken several times, including in 2019, at the 21 Convention, a manosphere conference organized by Anthony "Dream" Johnson.

Donovan and Tanner Guzy co-founded CHEST magazine, which is based in Utah, United States.

Views

Masculinity Donovan has been described as a male supremacist and a "male tribalist". According to the Political Research Associates' Shane Burley, "While the Wolves maintained a public persona of political neutrality, they had become a social center for the growing Alt Right and were openly welcoming active racialist leaders." Donovan left the Wolves of Vinland in 2018, later saying his association with the group was during a "dark chapter" in his life. He has called for restoring "traditional" gender roles, restricting women to birthing and raising children, and preventing them from leadership in society or politics. Donovan has suggested that women exist only to give birth to men, and that a family is useful only to make possible his idea of The Brotherhood. Donovan has said he does not believe women are evil, but that they are self-serving and must be controlled so as their wishes do not clash with men's interests.

Donovan has argued that "cultural Marxism" has resulted in normal male sexual behavior being considered sexual victimization, and that women use their chastity to control men. Donovan was sympathetic towards the white nationalist goals of the movement, such as promoting racial separatism and fighting "anti-white bias". According to Lyons, Donovan's primary focus in writing was on masculinity, and race was a secondary topic. Lyons also attributed the misogynist shift of the alt-right movement in part to Donovan, who he said contributed towards increasingly popular beliefs within the alt-right that women were unsuited to politics and unimportant to the movement. Shane Burley wrote that Donovan was well received among the alt-right because of "his extreme anti-feminism and defense of male violence", and that "his presence helps to round out the Alt Right's ideas about gender, introduces the Men's Rights community to their work, and he has pushed the reclaiming of Nordic racial spirituality and close-knit tribal structures that are ethnically defined".

Prior to the 2016 United States presidential election, Donovan tentatively supported Hillary Clinton as a candidate who could "drive home the reality that white men are no longer in charge... and that [the United States] is no longer their country and never will be again". He argued that a Trump presidency would only serve to hide the flaws in the system.

Donovan disavowed the alt-right in August 2017, following the Unite the Right rally in which an antifascist protester was killed. He wrote that he would no longer allow white nationalists to use or publish his writing, criticized Richard B. Spencer for describing the alt-right as a white nationalist movement, and decried the Unite the Right rally for bringing members of the alt-right together with neo-Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan, who he wrote "actively despise me and my friends". Donovan said in 2020 that he wished "White Nationalists would burn my books and stop following me". He also said that he chose to be a member of the alt-right during a difficult time in his life, and that he was trying to put the association behind him.

Donovan has been featured in several German-language literary publications and media – positively by the far-right, but also very critically in various publications on the political movement's concepts of gender. Historian Volker Weiß called him an "apocalyptic misogynist tending to be a Neanderthal". Author and journalist Simon Volpers published a monograph on Donovan's biography as well as on his political and gender-theoretical assertions. He identified them as a "variation of extreme right-wing conceptions of masculinity" and claimed that Donovan's writings are not of any essential novelty.