When it comes to talking to Gen Z men the right is beginning to sound a bit like the left: You can’t get ahead. The whole world is stacked against you. You’re the real victim here.
Podcaster Ben Shapiro recently said as much at a recent event, when he called out conservatives for inculcating young men with a “nihilistic” worldview rather than giving them the “tough talk” they need.
“I think that the right is actually weirdly feminizing young men by giving them a victimology to buy into,” Shapiro said at the Jewish Leadership Conference. “This notion that you, as a Gen Z male, are facing these obstacles that no other human has faced for all of human history, like, read a book for once! Like seriously, go talk to your grandfather.”
Young conservative men are being told that it’s impossible to get a house, a girlfriend, a job, even get off their phones. Yes, these might be real challenges, but politicians insisting life is nothing but an uphill battle is toxic.
This is the sort of victim complex conservatives recently accused the left of promoting. What happened to the “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” party?
Speaking in New York City on November 16, Shapiro acknowledged that young people have been failed by a “political class that lies to them.” But he also worried they’re being robbed of agency.
“Maybe this is just the nature of politics, which is that politicians have a stake in telling you that you have unsolvable problems that only they can solve if you give them enough power,” he said. “But the problem is, if you say that to young men and you remove the agency from them, they get angry and they don’t know what to do with that anger.”
Young conservatives have been assaulted with reasons that they can’t get ahead. When politicians and influencers have your ear via screens 24/7, their doomerism can make the world’s problems feel insurmountable — and make you feel very, very small.
Yes, free speech on campus has been a massive problem particularly for conservatives, but you can still be bold and put yourself out there. And you will survive. Yes, it’s true that DEI and identity politics got out of hand, but white America isn’t under siege.
Yes, illegal immigration has been out of control, but there isn’t a conspiracy to replace you. Yes, the war on toxic masculinity went too far, but that doesn’t preclude young men from aspiring to find a healthy expression of their own manhood.
Yes, feminism sometimes goes a bit overboard, but that doesn’t mean all women suck and you’ll never find a suitable mate. Yes, your phone is full of flashy, addictive algorithmic sirens luring you in, but it’s also within your power to put it away.
Yes, the economy is uncertain, but you have your whole life ahead of you to find your path.
The right is teaching young conservatives to think that they have no control over the outside forces acting upon them. They’re taking a page straight out of the left’s playbook — so much so that Donald Trump seems to have taken a liking to Zohran Mamdani, the king of victimology.
The core message of the conservative movement used to be “you have agency.” This is the party of Ronald Reagan, who said in his 1967 Inaugural Address as Governor of California, “There is no humanity or charity in destroying self-reliance, and dignity and self-respect, the very substance of moral fiber.”
Unfortunately, the right is starting to destroy the self-reliance of young people, insisting that the “elites” and the older generation are screwing them over — and playing straight into the hand of cranks like edge-lord podcaster Nick Fuentes who are eager to capitalize on misery.
“The older generations have completely betrayed and sold out the youth,” Fuentes wrote on X earlier this month. “They have left us a ‘diversified’ s—t hole filled with foreigners, dominated by the Left, controlled by global special interests. And when young men stand up to fight, they scold us for being too edgy online.”
It’s not clear how Fuentes is materially standing up, other than fomenting hatred and taking his anger about his own life out on other groups of people. This is exactly what J.D. Vance warned against in his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”
“The message of the right is increasingly: It’s not your fault if you’re a loser; it’s the government’s fault,” Vance wrote disapprovingly.
Telling young people that you can fix their intractable problems is a clear path to votes. But robbing a generation of agency is a shortsighted route to societal stagnation.
It’s time to turn the message around. Shapiro, for his part, suggested the right should start delivering a new line: “You should actually pick your ass up and go out and do something useful.” He’s spot on.
