Stefan Molyneux

Background

Molyneux was born in Ireland and raised mainly in London before moving to Canada at age 11. Molyneux attended the Glendon College of York University, where he was an actor at Theatre Glendon and a member of the Debating Society. He then attended the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal. Molyneux received a B.A. in History from McGill University in 1991 and an M.A. in History from University of Toronto in 1993.

Career

In early 1995, he and his brother Hugh founded Caribou Systems Corporation, a Toronto-based provider of environmental database software. The company was sold in 2000.

In 2005, Molyneux began a podcast called Freedomain Radio (FDR). He uses the same name for the website on which he distributes his own writings, hosts podcast archives, and provides an Internet forum for FDR listeners. Molyneux also produces videos and commentary on current events, and he presents a weekly call-in show on which listeners can ask questions or discuss personal issues. Molyneux funds his efforts by soliciting direct payment from listeners and viewers. As of August 2017, his channel has over 650 thousand subscribers and 190 million total video views.

In 2017, Molyneux interviewed James Damore, the Google employee who was fired after writing and distributing the Google's Ideological Echo Chamber memo.

Alt-right

Molyneux has been described as a part of the "alt-right" by Politico, Metro, NY Magazine, Vanity Fair, and CBS, and has been described as "one of the alt-right’s biggest YouTube stars" by Washington Post columnist J. J. McCullough. Business Insider has characterized Molyneux as far-right.

Stateless society

Molyneux theorizes that the pursuit of virtue in our personal lives could bring about a stateless society that abhors the initiation of force (see non-aggression principle). In addition, the free market (see anarcho-capitalism), polycentric legal systems and private "dispute resolution organizations" (DROs) could be empowered to find new and more peaceful ways of adjudicating common law infractions and contractual disputes.

In 2012, libertarian philosopher David Gordon gave a critical examination of Molyneux's 2007 Universally Preferable Behaviour: A Rational Proof for Secular Ethics in The Mises Review, stating, "He fails, and fails miserably. His arguments are often preposterously bad." Gordon would reply again to Molyneux's own response to the criticisms.

Family of origin (FOO) relationships

Molyneux refers to the family that people are born into as their "family of origin" or "FOO". Molyneux suggests that the family of origin relationships may not necessarily be desirable and in some circumstances may even be detrimental and thus for those individuals having suffered abusive childhood relationships it would be advantageous for them to sever such involuntary relationships as adults, or "deFOO". In this way, he views all adult relationships as being voluntary and discretionary rather than obligatory. According to a 2008 article in The Guardian, both Molyneux and his wife have "deFOOed".

A Voice for Men

Molyneux was a panelist at a 2014 Detroit conference held by the men's rights movement and manosphere organization, A Voice for Men. According to Jessica Roy of Time magazine, Molyneux argued that violence in the world is the result of how women treat their children, and that "If we could just get people to be nice to their babies for five years straight, that would be it for war, drug abuse, addiction, promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, ... Almost all would be completely eliminated, because they all arise from dysfunctional early childhood experiences, which are all run by women."

Cult accusations

According to Steven Hassan, a licensed mental health counselor with experience on cults, "Partly what's going on with the people on the Internet who are indoctrinated, they spend lots of hours on the computer. Videos can have them up all night for several nights in a row. Molyneux knows how to talk like he knows what he's talking about, despite very little academic research. He cites this and cites that, and presents it as the whole truth. It dismantles people's sense of self and replaces it with his sense of confidence about how to fix the world."

In 2009, Tu Thanh Ha wrote that Molyneux was called the leader of a "therapy cult" following Freedomain Radio (FDR) community member Tom Bell breaking off all contact with his family. In April 2008, Bell had called in to the show asking about his veganism and his feeling of disgust towards people that eat meat. Molyneux suggested that this disgust could have come from witnessing an authority figure who was cruel to animals. Bell responded by describing memories of his father being verbally and physically cruel to the family cat, causing him to feel intimidated by the father, and then described his emotional detachment toward his mother and the rest of his family.

The following month, Bell left a note stating he no longer wanted contact and left home. It was reported that, of the estimated 50,000 users of the website, about 20 FDR members had also "deFOOed" (disassociate from family of origin), and that many parents chose not to speak to the media in an effort to avoid alienating their children further. A representative of the British Cult Information Centre said they were following FDR, and noted that one sign of cults was that they cut people off from their families. Molyneux responded by saying that "If I advised a wife to leave an abusive husband, there would not be articles about how I am a cult leader."

Molyneux and FOO were subjects of an investigative documentary by Channel 5 in the United Kingdom, which aired on August 20, 2015.

Molyneux and "deFOOing" were one of three subjects featured on the February 18th, 2016 episode of the documentary series Dark Net. The episode clearly identifies Freedomain Radio as a cult.