Social media is abuzz with a survey showing 12th-grade boys are twice as likely to identify as conservative. The reality is a little more complicated, writes Arwa Mahdawi
I 100% believe there is a growing segment of the population of young white boys who are becoming radicalized. They see a world that is crumbling just like everyone else, but they have been shunned by the Left, and seemingly every other day the world’s problems are being blamed on them for some reason. Many of these folks feel like society is pushing them out and see that right wing extremist groups are accepting them. They keep hearing that racism and sexism is bad, and yet racism and sexism against white males somehow seems to be perfectly acceptable.
This is the exact type of exclusionary tactics that pushed so many post WW1 Germans into supporting the Nazi party right before WW2.
For years I’ve been hearing that Republicans are only old rich white men and that once they all eventually die, the GOP will be toast. Except that’s not true at all. Google image search the Proud Boys and tell me those guys are old. And there is that other group that wears the tan khakis (can’t think of their name). None of those people look older than 30.
I’ve been saying this for a while. Young white boys hear how horrible white men are, and because they’re kids, they don’t always understand the parts that are left unsaid. They just hear that the world is ending and it’s because of people like them. Then if they have trouble finding a girlfriend they get told they are incels and losers.
And suddenly you’ve got a whole demographic of young angry people ripe for exploitation. Telling them they’re stupid and evil for listening to the right wing nut jobs doesn’t help, they’ve been told how stupid and evil they are since they were children, they’re going to listen to the person who says “we accept you as you are”.
It’s been going on for a couple of decades at least, and look where we are now.
Totally accurate. And there is a ton of hypocrisy with this situation as well. As you stated, older white men are demonized by every group out there. But you can’t defend yourself if you are one of those older white men or immediately simpletons will claim you are RaCiSt. And these young white kids see this and think their dad or uncle or cousin aren’t so bad… why is the world constantly shitting all over them?
The most hilarious (and infuriating) part of all this is that the same people (usually on the Left) who go apeshit when people generalize a certain group have zero problems generalizing all white guys together. How does that make sense? As you stated, just because some white dude can’t get a GF doesn’t make him an incel. Just because some white dude dresses a certain way or listens to a certain type of music doesn’t mean he’s some hardcore MAGAt. Yet those generalizations are perfectly fine for society to make but god forbid you state that X group loves Y food, or Z group is not good at something.
And this hypocrisy theme continues elsewhere as well. Again, the Left loves to pretend not to want people to generalize, but they will typically generalize that just because someone is white, they immediately have some kind of special privileged, and yet if you are black, for instance, you are oppressed. I’m sorry, but I kind of doubt the kids of billionaire Beyonce or Kanye West are being oppressed by The Man. On the flip side, some dirt poor white kid from Appalachia has absolutely no advantages in this world compared to his dirt poor black neighbor. They go to the same shitty school, their parents work in the same shitty coal mine making the same shitty paycheck, they live in similar shitty mobile homes. Yet only one of those kids could potentially get a free-ride to go to college by leveraging his race and getting scholarships.
Kids aren’t stupid. They might not be very worldly or have experience doing things, but they see a lot of this bullshit and become easy prey for groups that are actively recruiting them and tell them that things aren’t right in the world.
I read a great article a while back about how no one has proposed an alternative to toxic masculinity, except for the far right who reinforces it. The left needs to more firmly speak up here.
Some possible traits to highlight – with the understanding that these traits are a spectrum among men and aren’t exclusionary of women – are the desire to protect and provide. That’s something we can point to.
I 100% believe there is a growing segment of the population of young white boys who are becoming radicalized. They see a world that is crumbling just like everyone else, but they have been shunned by the Left, and seemingly every other day the world’s problems are being blamed on them for some reason. Many of these folks feel like society is pushing them out and see that right wing extremist groups are accepting them. They keep hearing that racism and sexism is bad, and yet racism and sexism against white males somehow seems to be perfectly acceptable.
This is the exact type of exclusionary tactics that pushed so many post WW1 Germans into supporting the Nazi party right before WW2.
For years I’ve been hearing that Republicans are only old rich white men and that once they all eventually die, the GOP will be toast. Except that’s not true at all. Google image search the Proud Boys and tell me those guys are old. And there is that other group that wears the tan khakis (can’t think of their name). None of those people look older than 30.
This is a big problem that will only get worse.
I’ve been saying this for a while. Young white boys hear how horrible white men are, and because they’re kids, they don’t always understand the parts that are left unsaid. They just hear that the world is ending and it’s because of people like them. Then if they have trouble finding a girlfriend they get told they are incels and losers.
And suddenly you’ve got a whole demographic of young angry people ripe for exploitation. Telling them they’re stupid and evil for listening to the right wing nut jobs doesn’t help, they’ve been told how stupid and evil they are since they were children, they’re going to listen to the person who says “we accept you as you are”.
It’s been going on for a couple of decades at least, and look where we are now.
Totally accurate. And there is a ton of hypocrisy with this situation as well. As you stated, older white men are demonized by every group out there. But you can’t defend yourself if you are one of those older white men or immediately simpletons will claim you are RaCiSt. And these young white kids see this and think their dad or uncle or cousin aren’t so bad… why is the world constantly shitting all over them?
The most hilarious (and infuriating) part of all this is that the same people (usually on the Left) who go apeshit when people generalize a certain group have zero problems generalizing all white guys together. How does that make sense? As you stated, just because some white dude can’t get a GF doesn’t make him an incel. Just because some white dude dresses a certain way or listens to a certain type of music doesn’t mean he’s some hardcore MAGAt. Yet those generalizations are perfectly fine for society to make but god forbid you state that X group loves Y food, or Z group is not good at something.
And this hypocrisy theme continues elsewhere as well. Again, the Left loves to pretend not to want people to generalize, but they will typically generalize that just because someone is white, they immediately have some kind of special privileged, and yet if you are black, for instance, you are oppressed. I’m sorry, but I kind of doubt the kids of billionaire Beyonce or Kanye West are being oppressed by The Man. On the flip side, some dirt poor white kid from Appalachia has absolutely no advantages in this world compared to his dirt poor black neighbor. They go to the same shitty school, their parents work in the same shitty coal mine making the same shitty paycheck, they live in similar shitty mobile homes. Yet only one of those kids could potentially get a free-ride to go to college by leveraging his race and getting scholarships.
Kids aren’t stupid. They might not be very worldly or have experience doing things, but they see a lot of this bullshit and become easy prey for groups that are actively recruiting them and tell them that things aren’t right in the world.
I read a great article a while back about how no one has proposed an alternative to toxic masculinity, except for the far right who reinforces it. The left needs to more firmly speak up here.
Some possible traits to highlight – with the understanding that these traits are a spectrum among men and aren’t exclusionary of women – are the desire to protect and provide. That’s something we can point to.
Not only does the Left not have an answer to this, they actually make things worse by pushing away these folks.