Zoomer Dudes' Embrace of Authoritarianism Is Worse Than You Think

We’re a long way from millennials and Gen-Xers becoming irate online at the mere suggestion that Gen-Z men might be going fash. 

It was back in the summer, when polling data began trickling out showing young men overwhelmingly supporting the nakedly fascist Trump campaign, that the cultural and political impact of the so-called Manosphere began to rear its hideous head. It wasn’t just that guys between 18 and 25 were kinda sorta leaning Trump’s way over Kamala Harris; they were ready to back him in startling numbers four years after he tried and failed to overthrow the U.S. government without consequence. 

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A few mainstream outlets wrote about the shocking polling data – young folks have traditionally voted Democrat or not at all – and were met with swift condemnation for buying into cross-tab polling data drilling down on voter demographics in the months before the 2024 election. 

I followed suit and wrote about young Americans cuddling up to their anti-democracy daddy because it made so much sense: These kids had been raised on wretched right-wing podcasts and YouTube and TikTok influencers carefully cultivating their grievances, telling these boys they had been wronged by women, by immigrants, by people of color, by the liberal politicians who had overseen the dismantling of the centuries-long white supremacy project. I was roundly chastised by fellow guys in their 40s who rejected the suggestion that young men were embracing fascism. Their contention was that there was no reason for young guys, having grown up in the comfort of 21st century life, to go all in on authoritarianism. There was no material analysis that said zoomer men had no choice but to go fash, these older men argued, completely ignoring the reality creation machines that are their social media algorithms. It is those machines that convinced them of their victimhood status.

I take no pleasure in having been correct about all this.

Nothing Stands In Your Way When You’re A Boy

Young men becoming increasingly right wing are a problem that has to be solved before it’s too late

Bad Faith TimesDenny Carter

A recent analysis of 2024 voting data published by Vox lays bare just how far down the fascist rabbit hole young guys have fallen. The numbers once again highlight a worldwide trend: Women voters largely siding with pro-democracy forces while young men vote to burn it all down from mother’s basement. 

There’s also this enormous amount of gender polarization. If you look at the gender gap — just what fraction of the vote Kamala Harris got versus what fraction of the vote Donald Trump got among men and women — for voters over the age of 30, there was about a 10 percent gender gap between men and women. And that’s roughly speaking where it’s been in American politics for most of the last 20 years. But if you look at voters under the age of 25, the gender gap has doubled in size. And if you look at 18-year-olds, specifically, 18-year-old men were 23 percentage points more likely to vote for Donald Trump than 18-year-old women. And gender polarization seems to be increasing in other countries as well. How it plays out varies from country to country. In Germany, for example, young women voted in very high numbers for Die Linke, the left-wing party there.

That this is not a trend limited to young guys in the United States is important and might make the issue of male radicalization easier to understand. Across borders and cultures and personal experiences, teenagers and men in their early-20s are being told by the algorithm that they are under constant attack from forces seen and unseen. It's why we have to be honest with ourselves about what the X and Meta and TikTok algorithms really are: A powerful fascist creation machine.

These boys, now men with voting rights, grew up hearing again and again that they are the Real Victims of a society overrun by Woke, whatever that means. Their fathers and grandfathers had run the world and the world was better for it, the messaging goes. They had been denied their rightful place atop the hierarchy of oppression – a toxic little structure that exists in the conservative mind as a way to understand the world and their place in it. No one, they were told, had faced discrimination like they have faced discrimination.

“A lot of different things could be causing this,” said David Shor, director of the Blue Rose Research firm, which conducted the analysis of 2024 voting trends (I understand Shor is widely seen as a big part of the problem with opposing a radicalized Republican Party; his firm’s data is still worth considering). “But I think that if you look at non-political polling, you can really see evidence that there is wild, cultural change afoot here and basically everywhere else in the online world. In Norway, there’s a poll of high school students where the fraction of young men saying, 'gender equality has gone too far' spiked in recent years. I don’t know necessarily what the answer to that is. But I think it’s important to resist nihilism. These young men who have terrible, retrograde views on politics and gender relations are still pro-choice. They still support universal health care. I think we need our politicians to focus on those fights. But it’s extremely important for other people — who don’t need to win elections — to try to improve the online discourse around these more divisive issues.”

The Zoomers Are Flirting With Fascism

Young Americans are open to fascism at rates that should frighten everyone trying to hang on to the republic.

Bad Faith TimesDenny Carter

These young guys never stood a chance to carry on the tradition of their millennial elders, who have enthusiastically backed liberal, pro-democracy politicians for the entirety of their voting lives. That anyone would be surprised that Gen Z men would find authoritarianism acceptable has not paid attention to the media zoomers have consumed as they have come of age. 

With no historical context through which to view current events – TikTok doesn’t provide that – and with no understanding of the importance of self governance, zoomer dudes have drank greedily from a hose of hate and disinformation, and we’re all sicker for it. All the folks in their 30s and 40s who were shocked and appalled that zoomer men going fash was a storyline in the run-up to the election should have accepted it as inevitable that a generation brainwashed by aggressively ignorant far-right influencers like Joe Rogan and Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk would reject democracy completely when they had the chance. They would side with the rough-and-tumble alpha male wearing makeup and fake hair and promising a return to glory over the woman pledging to uphold constitutional governance for another four years.

“They just want to live in the same country as their parents. I don't know if that's a social issue or an economic issue,” far-right youth whisperer Charlie Kirk told NPR shortly after the 2024 election. “They want a nice life, and they feel it slipping away.”

These young men wanted a nice life. So they voted for the candidate whose co-presidential candidate pledged to tank the economy once in power. Perhaps this is 12-dimensional chess that my elder millennial mind cannot comprehend. 

Maybe – just maybe – zoomer men will keep their hand on the proverbial stove long enough to learn their lesson and stop wholeheartedly backing politicians who promise to make life worse for everyone. Recent polling of young guys shows their support for Trump has plummeted since he took office and started doing the shit he pledged to do if elected. Apparently zoomer bros have serious questions about Trump’s support for cryptocurrency, now wondering if the lifelong conman is using crypto to fleece members of his cult and further enrich himself (like every other person in the crypto industry). They’re cool with masked government agents knocking down doors and shipping American citizens to foreign prison camps, and they seem OK with threatening imperialist wars against peaceful neighboring nations, but don’t mess with their crypto. Muh Bitcoin, things of that nature.

Gen Z guys, like a lot of demographics in the United States, are going to have to learn some hard lessons in the coming years. Years and years of being told that only a strongman can deliver the life they believe they deserve led them down the path of abandoning the very concept of the US as a free nation governed by laws, not people. Rogan and the rest told these young guys to seek a man with certain characteristics – a total lack of empathy, rejection of love, a commitment to domination and subjugation and, most importantly, tradition – and they landed on Donald Trump. 

This came four short years after Trump received just 41 percent of the young male vote. Their leader (temporarily) defeated, the Manosphere went to work on the impressionable minds of zoomer dudes. Their efforts paid off bigly.

Many of these young guys have never been told there is more to being a man. Life, these guys need to hear, is not a war of all against all. We don't have to exist in a Hobbesian nightmare if we don't want to; a win for a woman or a person of color is not a loss for you. They need to hear that there are other, more positive versions of masculinity: Respect for others, the sharing of responsibilities, caretaking, self deprecation, supporting and uplifting fellow bros, using plain language to tell other men that it’s not OK to be a raging misogynist, encouraging inclusivity as a formula for strengthening a community. These guys need to know men can be good. It's a choice.

There is a way to change their minds and soften their hearts. There is another path for these guys drifting toward fascism, or outright embracing it. It's a path for which they will remain unaware unless it is provided to them on the internet.

Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.