‘Alpha male energy’: Why Jon Zherka is the most controversial man on social media
What do you get if you throw Alex Jones, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, a Baptist preacher and seventeen cans of Red Bull in a blender? Jon Zherka.
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What do you get if you throw Alex Jones, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, a Baptist preacher and seventeen cans of Red Bull in a blender?
Jon Zherka.
You mightn’t have heard of him before, but believe me, it’s only a matter of time before his name pops up on your social media feed.
That’s because the “6’5 king of alpha male energy” is taking the internet by storm. On TikTok, his videos have been viewed tens of millions of times.
According to his YouTube channel, which boasts 93,000-plus subscribers, Jon Zherka is a comedian who excels at pushing boundaries.
His “humour” – controversial to say the least – explores “topics such as race, religion, gender dynamics and orientation”.
Zherka’s comedy, we’re told, involves “challenging perceptions and sparking dialogue, all while making sure the laughs keep coming”. He’s not your average comedian, he’s Jon Zherka, a human wrecking ball who is liable to say what he wants, when he wants.
Although the influencer, who was raised in Canada, is eager to sell himself as a comedian, it’s very difficult to tell when the 29-year-old is being serious and when he’s joking.
A self-confessed drug user, Zherka regularly assures viewers and listeners that cocaine is very much his drug of choice. Is he joking? Perhaps. But perhaps not.
A man who seems to get a thrill from saying the most shocking stuff imaginable, Zherka doesn’t just cross the line. He obliterates it.
When he is not busy referring to women as “wh*res” he can be found using the n-word repeatedly. Although he regularly tells people he is black, during a recent, rather crazy interview, he spoke about his Albanian roots.
Flanked by two attractive young women, Zherka also spoke about a number of other topics, including his previous role working nightclub security in some of the most dangerous clubs in Canada.
Not known for modesty, he believes – quite literally – that men are better “at everything” than women. Does this include childbirth? I reached out to Zherka for a comment. Sadly, the self-labelled “men’s rights activist” never responded.
Although Zherka can, at times, be entertaining, his ever-evolving friendship with Nick Fuentes, a prominent antisemite, is particularly disturbing.
For the uninitiated, Fuentes has openly praised Hitler, denied the Holocaust and compared Jews being burnt in concentration camps to cookies in an oven.
As work carried out by Sabine von Mering – a prominent researcher at Brandeis University – has shown, certain influential individuals like Fuentes actively use various social media platforms to spread hateful antisemitic content – a problem that appears to be getting worse.
Furthermore, as University of Surrey criminology expert Emily Setty recently noted, influencers like Zherka regularly “present a celebratory version of masculinity” which seeks to “legitimise, even agitate, male grievances and resentment, including towards women”.
Zherka-like content, she added, “may be enticing to boys and young men who feel masculinity is being unfairly stigmatised and blamed”.
Zherka, who regularly refers to women as “wh*res”, “b*tches” and “sl*ts”, may very well be contributing to the problem. After all, using the “comedian card” can only get you so far.
In fact, one could argue that Zherka uses the “I’m a comedian” argument to afford himself a greater degree of freedom over what he says and how he behaves.
What’s not up for debate, however, is his troubled past. Behind all the dark humour and profanity-laden diatribes lies a man with no shortage of problems.
Zherka recently sat down for an interview with the fitness influencer Bradley Martyn, and in between longwinded stories about cocaine and womanising, there were a few moments of radical honesty.
During one of these moments, in which Zherka appeared to break character, he spoke passionately about the loss of his best friend, who was stabbed on a night out.
The murder had a profound effect on his life. Soon after, he spiralled into a world full of alcohol and drug abuse and self harm tendencies. Now, though, he’s reformed (alleged coke habit aside) – thanks to Christ. Yes, that Christ.
You see, Zherka also happens to be an evangelical Christian. Every other religion, he told Martyn, is a sham. In plain, Zherka-inspired English: you must find Christ, or prepare to burn in hell.
Zherka sees himself as the last masculine Christian, someone sent to do the Lord’s work.
When he’s not busy trying to convert the masses to Christianity, Zherka enjoys pushing flat earth conspiracies. Not surprisingly, Zherka also believes that the moon landing of 1969, when two American astronauts became the first humans to walk on the lunar surface, was faked.
His close friend, Sneako, also a wildly popular influencer, also subscribes to the fake moon landing narrative.
Another ally of Zherka is Hannah Pearl Davis, the so-called “female Andrew Tate”.
But ironically or not, Zherka regularly denounces the Tates, ridiculing them for running a shady webcam business. In retaliation for the ridicule, Zherka insists that he was recently attacked by a number of Tate-affiliated thugs.
Which begs the question – what does the future have in store for the provocateur extraordinaire?
In 2022, his arch-nemesis Andrew Tate was banned from all major social media platforms. Does 2023 have something similar in store for Jon Zherka? In truth, only time will tell.
But if Zherka does go down, he won’t go down quietly.
John Mac Ghlionn is a freelance writer
Originally published as ‘Alpha male energy’: Why Jon Zherka is the most controversial man on social media
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