A popular narrative suggests young people are liberal and getting more liberal. Thus, social media buzzed when a chart surfaced in spring that seemed to suggest 12th-grade boys had become overwhelm…
While many believe young people are becoming more liberal, data shows that 12th grade boys are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative compared to liberal. Around 25% of high school seniors identify as conservative while only 13% identify as liberal. In contrast, the share of 12th grade girls identifying as liberal has risen to 30%. Many factors may contribute to this trend, including the rhetoric of Donald Trump which appealed to disaffected young men, and the focus of progressive movements on issues of gender and racial equality which some young men perceive as a “matriarchy.” However, most high school seniors claim no political identity, and many boys in high school do not actively discuss
My first election out of high school I voted for a right wing candidate because that’s what my Dad voted for, but also because I was entrenched in Christian ideaology and patriarchal propoganda.
After that I started paying a bit more attention to politics and slowly moved to the left with a few leaps along the way. Nowadays I find the Labor party of Aus to be about as conservative as I can stand. I can barely hide my disgust with anything to the right of them.
Real life experience can be far more radicalising than any immature ideas you inherent in high school.
Edit: My major leaps were: Having an employer illegally underpay me, seeing my friends lose ‘stable’ jobs in 2008, having a close friend come out as gay, leaving the church, volunteering with unhoused people, living in the UK, living in a rental controlled by a landlord with over 100 properties, and doing disaster relief work.
I spent nearly every dollar I had saved to live in London, and don’t think I’d ever seen such visible displays of wealth disparity once I got there. I got a good paying job but often struggled to save and pay all my bills.
I got to live through the Brexit debate while living behind a chip shop in a poorer, multicultural neighbourhood and heard all the bullshit about immigration being directed at brown people while I worked there as an immigrant myself but because I was white I was largely accepted.
I learned a new level of contempt for the pointless wealth of the monarchy and had to deal with a boss who was plainly bad at his job but because he had an OBE everyone around me worshipped him like he could do no wrong.
I also worked for some very large companies and realised they aren’t anything special, just willing to exploit more people.
I read a great WaPo article on this recently. Basically on the left, no one can define healthy masculinity and it’s really opened up a spot for the right wing to swoop in and define it for us.
The left side of politics has always struggled to bring people along for the journey, they can advocate for people but building a coherent argument and inspiring people to come along for the ride will always be their downfall. They cannot achieve progressive change if they fail to recognize the concerns of the right.
The left side of politics has always struggled to bring people along for the journey, they can advocate for people but building a coherent argument and inspiring people to come along for the ride will always be their downfall
You’re right. Nothing that’s truly valuable in legislation is simple. It’s hard to turn something complicated into a sound byte without making shit up, and the Left in most countries have to be careful alienating the intellectuals if they start making shit up. We don’t vote for bullshit.
The Right has no problem making shit up and those who vote for them are not really affected by it. When the Notch Baby bullshit was going on (a US thing… there was basically a big hoax about a generation being owed money, and a lot of politicians ran with it), I didn’t know a single right-leaning voter who would give the least bit of a shit that they were voting for people who were willfully taking advantage of the elderly. I guarantee a left-party candidate who pulled that shit would lose by a landslide.
So the Right can bad-faith point out a concern that “toxic masculinity” is just “masculinity” and a good thing. They know the Left can’t soundbyte their way out of it because it’s not a one-liner to say “it’s not about masculinity or feminity, it’s about not being a dick and all of us helping the underdog”. It’s VERY easy to sell people who aren’t the underdog on victim complexes.
John Oliver, John Iadorola from the damage report, Mike Figuredo from the Humanist report, Kyle Kulenski from secular talk, David Doel from the rational national, Sam Seder from the majority report, Lance from the Serfs, Matt Binder from the majority report. Left leaning positive male role models.
I’m sure there is more but they stand out as I watch them every week.
We’ve also got Brian Tyler Cohen, Hasan Piker, David Pakman as well. Beau Of The 5th Column I know has already been listed, but I feel when it comes to instilling change in the hearts and mind of radicalized young men, he’s up there with Hasan and BTC.
This, want it or not, it is not hard for boys to feel incredibly alienated in the left hemisphere. We gone from “girls have issues too” to “only girls can have issues”. It’s ridiculous, and even more ridiculous when you remember that girls reach their growth spurt sooner than boys, effectively eliminating many of the purported advantages of boys over girl, making them feel even more alienated.
I’m pretty far left and in my entire life I’ve never experienced “only girls can have issues” as more than an extreme fringe statement.
What I tend to see regarding men is how they, too, are victims of toxic masculinity, taught to internalize their emotions until they have literal breakdowns. The Left gives a fuck about that, and it’s one of the cited reasons they have problems with toxic masculinity.
I wonder where you get the impression that “the left” is saying “only girls can have issues”? It feels to me like people have spun this reactionary tale in the backlash to feminism but no one is actually saying that.
It is like every time someone tries to talk about issues women face this is seen as an attack on men. Which I find frankly ridiculous. At the same time, in many cases when people bring up boy’s or men’s issues they will only do so while simultaneously attacking feminist talking points. This is especially prevalent on social media platforms like Reddit and YouTube.
It does seem like anti-feminists and sometimes straight up misogynistic people have monopolized the entire discussion surrounding men’s issues. When you look up information regarding issues men face it is really hard to not end up in a hateful corner of the internet. Some of these sources do not actually have the people looking for help at heart, they are simply anti-feminist and will even go so far as to provide inaccurate information or withhold information just so that they can keep up their narrative.
in many cases when people bring up boy’s or men’s issues they will only do so while simultaneously attacking feminist talking points.
This is very much a talking point by “only girls can have issues” people.
“Men don’t have issues, men’s rights groups only exist to spread misogyny!”
That is a key point of why the idea that men’s issues are not taken seriously is spreading, because simply talking about / focusing on men’s issues quickly gets people labled as misogynists.
This both gets people to stop caring about the idea of misogynism, because “apparently simply talking about men’s issues is misogyny”, and thereby also pushes people to develop more problematic views.
My dad was a Never Trumper who we gently led out. And Jan 6th made him an “independent” (he votes for Democrats now). My mom is a loyal Republican (somehow)… but agrees Trump is an arrogant piece of garbage and not the horse to bet on.
And this is why Republicans are so opposed to higher education. My dad grew up in a conservative household - like, so conservative that my grandad would respond to the question of who he was going to vote for with “I’m a Republican. I vote for the nominee,” and it wasn’t until he went to college and met people with life experiences that were different from his that my dad began to question the things he was told about the world when he was growing up.
It’s a lot easier to convince you that your life sucks because Jewish brown immigrants are taking all the jobs and women won’t date you because, actually, they’re the sexist ones (and it definitely has nothing to do with the fact that you treat them like sex toys) if you’ve never been beyond 40 miles of where you were born and have never been outside of a town where everybody looks like you.
The rate of girls identitying as liberal is significantly higher and unlike the conservative boys, the rate hasn’t started dropping off. Probably because the girls face actual threats to their freedoms, while the conservative boys’ complaints are about a bunch of imaginary nonsense.
But of course it’s boys who get the headline. The hill is a right wing dumpster bin.
This is definitely right-wing trash. However, we should be using headlines like this to fire up the country. Everyone knows that
“republican” men think they have the last say about reproductive rights. Let’s use their own “reports” to show those women that their boyfriends/husbands/fathers think they own them.
Oh shit an education gap? Better attack minorities, take away women’s rights, burn a bunch of books and accelerate full speed into the brick wall of climate change.
The reality is that conservatives aren’t trying to address any actual problems facing young men, they’re just trying to turn their disillusionment into votes and gun sales.
Calmly approach anyone in the education sector with this study, without the “nobody cares about men anymore!” theatrics and you’ll have millions of people – mostly “leftists” – with thoughts on how to improve things.
But do things ever improve? Nope! Liberal decisions generally only place any value on the well-being of women and minorities, while conservative decisions generally only place any value on the bank accounts of those making the decisions. You have to go very far left before people start caring about men, and the people that far left aren’t numerous enough to create any meaningful change.
Yeah that’s why they’re always pushing things like “a higher minimum wage (but only for women and minorities)” and “universal healthcare (and by universal we mean just women and minorities)”.
The federal minimum wage hasn’t changed. We don’t have universal healthcare, but we do have mandatory enrichment of private insurance companies’ pockets, thanks to Obama.
A dismissal or lack of consideration for the unique issues facing men and boys and the unique solutions they require. Focusing exclusively on women and girls. Viewing boys as defective girls.
In this thread, here’s a few specific examples
Let’s use their own “reports” to show those women that their boyfriends/husbands/fathers think they own them.
The rate of girls identitying as liberal is significantly higher[…]Probably because the girls face actual threats to their freedoms, while the conservative boys’ complaints are about a bunch of imaginary nonsense.
I was a “Fox News”-viewing turd in high school, too[…]then I grew up.
It’s passive because it’s not direct and focused. It’s more neglect than abuse. Men’s problems are not just secondary; they’re not even worth consideration, and men should just Fix It Themselves.
Schools in particular are extremely geared towards focusing on girls and their successful development.
Yeah, I’m not buying it. The Patriarchy is real, and whatever imagined neglect you think is happening is so far removed from the reality of what women have to deal with all day every day that it’s laughable. Won’t someone think of the poor dominant class?
What sucks is that conservatives don’t generally act in most men’s best interests either. It’s just a grift to get us to buy in to their brand and vote for them. Look at people like Andrew Tate.
Do you have kids? I do. My boy has more than enough unstructured outdoor play and comes home scraped up all the time. I’ve volunteered as a lunch / recess monitor. They’re doing just fine and doing young boy things.
Did you know that we currently still have almost exactly the same school form that we had when school was for boys only? It was literally designed with only boys in mind. That the sexism girls face, which makes them more compliant and more pleasing for teachers, is now seen as an attack on boys is hilarious. When you want them to be equally liked by the teachers you will have to punish boys as much as girls for being rough. You have to encourage boys as well to stay clean, play domestic shit indoors and care more for their social appearance. Because that’s what giving girls their current “advantage”.
lol what are you smoking? Recess hasn’t gone anywhere lmao. In fact, I fucking wish I had as cool of a playground for recess as my nephew does when I was a kid. Shit’s fancy as fuck, all kinds of monkey bars, rock walls, a puke-a-tron that puts the merry-go-rounds of old to shame, etc… Mind you, he goes to school in a super liberal school district of an already very liberal state. The park district playgrounds have gotten way cooler too, one of the playgrounds at my local park has a fucking zipline now.
The fact that fucking recess is the best you could come up with, and it’s just blatantly not even fucking true, says it all.
Also, girls like outdoor recess too, MORE so than boys, actually, in my experience. What a weird thing to gender.
The gender performance gap in primary and secondary education is, however, well documented, with girls outperforming boys to a statistically significant degree in ELA across the board, but with variability from school district to school district in math. Interestingly, boys tend to outperform girls in math mostly in higher income school districts, suggesting that two things can be true at once: patriarchal attitudes around boys and math performance can and do persist, mostly in white bread communities, AND, the educational system as a whole may be failing some boys, mostly in lower income communities.
Where the discussion gets gross, of course, is where MRA types use these statistics as a justification for misogyny, or on the flip side where those sensitive to that go out of their way to wave stats like this away, sometimes even making a ‘boys will be boys’ argument that is historically problematic for completely different reasons and in the end amounts to blaming the kids for the problem.
Again, two things can be true at once - society is still male dominated and victimizes women in many facets of life. At the same time, the little boys struggling at school … mostly in poor neighborhoods … aren’t the root of the problem, and certainly aren’t the ‘dominant class’ referred to above. The conversation should not be a zero sum game where recognizing the challenges of one group means you are trivializing the challenges of another.
(Though in fairness many do try to make it thus, so the caution is understandable).
We can trade anecdotes (and insults) all day long and none of it means a thing. You asked for a specific example and I gave you one. Just the first one off the top of my head. Schools in my area are canceling unstructured outdoor play time, which hurts boys more than girls.
Here’s one you’re probably more familiar with, since it’s nationwide: men being pushed out of careers in education.
I’m sure you’ll just move the goalposts on that one too though. “Ah but it’s not GOVERNMENT doing it so it doesn’t count!” or “I know a male teacher so it doesn’t count!”
Several boys only organizations or programs have changed to accepting all genders. Meanwhile, most girls only organizations or programs have remained girls only.
So what? That has nothing to do with anyone’s rights. Girls are facing having their body autonomy stripped away and the best you can come up with for boys is that they don’t have boys only orgs at school anymore?
Gendered organizations take away valuable educational opportunities from the opposite gender when they have no alternative. Since this is about high schoolers, it’s worth noting that when I was in high school, there were some extra-curricular educational opportunities that were girls-only and had no open-enrollment equivalent whatsoever. Of course, if those same clubs only allowed boys, there would be a shitstorm and people would probably end up losing their jobs over it.
WTF does that matter? Are you seriously making the argument that the only people who matter are ones whose rights are threatened?
Attitudes like this are the reason the alt-right is rising in this country. Good grief there’s so many opinions in here that are just rank, literally stomach turning.
Why? Following your logic it would also be sexist against women to write an article or start a discussion without addressing women’s issues as well. Wouldn’t it also be racist and ableist if you don’t talk about the issues minorities face? Don’t you see how this doesn’t make sense?
It’s not discrimatory against all other “groups” if you bring up the issues of one group.
Anecdotally I want to say boys have always felt more conservative around that age, especially when I was in highschool in the early 2000s. Granted I lived my teen years in the south, and this probably more of a cope than an actual explanation. There definitely seems to be a lot more active targeting of young men by right wing influencers now. In the past right wing media seemed to always be the domain of old people.
I went through a really weird phase in my life when I was kind of somewhere between conservative and neoliberal. And that was when I lived for 5 years in Arizona of all places. Now I am so far to the left that there isn’t really much more room for me to head. Recruiting conservatives at young ages apparently seems to be the key move for fundamentalists of all brands. This has been time-tested by the likes Al Qaida, ISIS, and the Taliban.
It’s absurd, yes, but nothing new. Many of the kids at my own school are leaning to the far right, without ever stopping and wondering if it even profits them. All they see are a couple of Instagram reels and hear “global leader” and “country’s decade” and decide they’ll follow the government blindly even if the most harm will be done to them. Worshipping your political idols is a way of life, and anyone who doesn’t see the very same line as yours is an anti-nationalist. You might have guessed by now, alas, I speak of India.
As long as young men and boys see that they are discriminated against, devalued, and excluded, there will always be grifters ready to convince them that their problems are caused by some other group of normal people instead of the people actually doing the discrimination and steering the values of society.
In many ways I still consider myself libertarian, but moreso in anti authority leaning than Republican but with a cooler label. Many of my peers in highschool and university clicked with the pro guns, pro expression sentiment, but when it came actually letting queer people and religious minorities live their lives, or allowing women control over their own bodies and healthcare, they always seemed to side with the Authoritarians in power threatening the to restrict these people. Not to mention many of them had no problem with authority as long as it came from a corporate entity or oligarch.
I still identify with the term Libertarian, but have stopped using it because it truly doesn’t represent what it was supposed to mean anymore.
There is such a thing as a “Libertarian Socialist”, which seems to be what you are looking for. A lot of Libertarian Socialists also just call themselves “anarchists”; and “anarchism” essentially just means something like “anti-authority” or “anti-hierarchy”.
If you want to maybe explore it a bit:
Homage to Catalonia is a book written by George Orwell where he tells of his time in Spain fighting alongside the anarchists and socialists in Spain (against the fascists supported by Hitler and Mussolini, and against the republicans backed by Stalin).
The Dispossessed written by Ursula K. Le Guin; it’s a sci-fi story about a society living on a moon, who are anti-capitalists and supposedly anarchists (whether they are anarchists or not is one of the focus points of the story).
If you just want to read theory instead, you can also search for Pyotr Kropotkin, and Emma Goldberg.
yeah it’s a shame that libertarian basically means closeted republican these days
is there a better term?
I’d consider myself pretty libertarian-minded in the whole ‘you live your life and I live mine’ style, but not in the ‘let corporations do whatever they want to workers and the environment’ style
Democrat isn’t really an ideology though as much as it’s a coalition of voters. They can be anyone from Communists and socialists to conservatives who don’t align with the Republican party. The majority of politicians within the party tend to be free market liberals akin to Clinton, with a few European style Social Democrats akin to Bernie Sanders and AOC. As someone who supports gun ownership and rejects the existence of corporate welfare and monopolies, I might not identify with many of the politicians within the Democratic party. Likewise I take issue with the Republican’s stances towards human rights, the establishment of religion, and putting the legitimacy of elections into question. I might be more comfortable with voting Democrat, but the party’s platform would not be how I would describe my ideology.
A “Democrat” is a member of the “Democratic Party” of the USA, it is not a political ideology in itself. Democrats are usually economic Liberals and don’t care that much about workers or the environment, but some are Social Democrats (Bernie Sanders). They are also usually socially progressive.
The Republican Party is also composed mainly of economic liberals; however, they are typically socially conservative.
And honestly, ‘conservative’ shouldn’t be a bad word either. But it’s been morphed into this fascist hate machine, and it’s hard to see what you’ve become when you’re on the inside.
It’s not like Democrats are screaming to tear down the Walmarts and Dollar Generals, and bring back local businesses and repairable products. Neither side is all that great, it’s just that one is teetering on genocidal. I’m not saying don’t vote democrat, because you absolutely have to if you want to head off what’s coming. But we need to start looking at this problem more holistically, if we don’t just want to perpetuate it in future generations.
Source? I never heard fundamentalism was coined as an alternative to saying conservative. Fundamentalism could be described as conservative but I don’t think the 1920s fundamentalists were trying to avoid that in any way.
I often go with Anti-Authoritarian when describing my beliefs. I’ve played around with the Anarchist label as well, though it seems to have the same affect on Communists who want an edgier label (which is ironic, considering both groups have clashed with each other throughout history)
There have been examples of anarchy working. Unfortunately, most of the ones I know of were around during World War 2 and got crushed between 2 larger opponents, or backstabbed by one of them.
Anarchists - and other socialists in Catalonia - during the Spanish Civil War, were stuck between the fascists and the republicans (Soviets), sided with the Soviets and ended up being betrayed. Homage to Catalonia by Orwell is a good book about the civil war and the anarchists.
Korean People’s Association in Manchuria were destroyed by Japan a few years before WW2 during a war between China and Japan IIRC, and apparently some of its leaders were also killed by “Korean communists” (the same ones that ended up forming North Korea).
The Black Army of Ukraine fought the Red and White armies at separate times; one time they joined the Red Army against the White Army, and were betrayed.
You might have noticed a pattern there, which is also why a lot of anarchists are not found of Marxist-Leninists or Stalinists.
I can also relate, a classic libertarian utopia sounds great until you realise poor people exist. I think a lot of individuals are just afraid of personal growth because it often means admitting you were wrong.
Well, it’s not something you just institute overnight. Just like with communism, if you try that you’d end up with a pretty big mess, because people will manipulate the framework for their own personal gains. Instead it’s something you work towards slowly, through education and efforts to balance the system until it’s not really needed anymore.
The keys always have to be:
People legitimately caring about their neighbors, and supporting each other through good times and bad
People working towards progress for the sake of progress and their community, not for personal gain
Our actions weave into the fabric of society, and future generations are formed from that same fabric. It takes time to shift how our nature manifests into actual behavior.
Are the history books capitalist propaganda too, then? Because I’m not aware of any instance in history when a stable society emerged with no governing authority and no one taking advantage of anyone else. To my knowledge, at least one of those things always ended up happening, and quickly.
Most humans are selfish and jealous by nature. Not all, but most, and it only takes one jerk to ruin it for everyone. Any system that ignores this fact, and does not have some strategy for dealing with it, is doomed to failure.
The only way I foresee your vision ever becoming reality is if a technological revolution enables a post-scarcity economy, as seen in some science fiction like Star Trek. This could remove the main driver for humanity’s selfishness. Maybe. But we aren’t even close to having the technology needed to accomplish that.
The trend shows identification to either label is falling. Really reads as a way to spin what is likely a move even more left by many high schoolers as a move right by pretending no other axis exist than conservative/liberal. Only 35% said either label. The overwhelming majority didnt pick a label.
The same thing fascism seemingly has to offer: easy solutions to complex problems.
I’m not saying (especially white) young men are treated unfair but as one myself it’s easy to come to the conclusion as you do feel a rift between fulfilling conservative societal norms you grew up with and learned from your elders for which isn’t really a space left anymore except of conservative circles so you do kinda feel like being privileged is a burden because you think you have to fulfill more expectations than other groups and I think there’s a lack of addressing this in public discourse without simply demonizing young males for trying to find their identity in a way that also includes a healthy relationship with one’s own masculinity. If you discuss this I feel like you’re quickly drifting into incel and alpha bullshit territory because they’re the only ones addressing those problems but of course they don’t offer actual solutions because that’s not really part of their business model.
It’s important to recognize that fascists are not evil comic book villains. If you are a member of their ethnostate they will come off quite pleasant. They will say “You are beautiful, you are kind, you are wise. We are building a utopia and we’d like you to join us.” Then eventually they will say “We cannot build a utopia because they stand in our way. They are ugly, they are cruel, they are stupid.” And then before you know it you are building gas chambers.
It’s also fun to be in a group and authorian regimes usually have nice aesthetics. It can be very tempting when a group includes you and you think you’ll have a purpose as a human being by joining.
Maybe we should found a fascist group just without the fascism and it’s including for everyone where everyone dresses nice and we march together and some guy holds energetic speeches about random stuff like that one time his dog ate an entire birthday cake and there’s a specific greeting we use.
Unfortunately fascism can’t actually work without an “other” to be a scapegoat. Fascism frames history as the struggle of an infallible ethnostate towards prosperity. Therefore any imperfection in the state is the result of the influence of “others” working against the state. Without an “other” fascists would actually need to take responsibility for society’s shortcomings.
Theory: Entertainment propaganda - like Fox News and (for the non-elderly) performative alt-right influencers/male-rights-douchebags - succeeds for the same reasons as addictive drugs. They introduce a quick dopamine rush of easy answers, validation, and a feeling of euphoric purpose.
Funny, people are mostly blaming the left for not adressing young boys mental health, but not the right for manipulating them into becoming sexist and violent.
Because we’ve done a bad job of reconciling everything popular culture tells you it means to be a man or manly or sexually attractive with everything popular culture also says is outdated or wrong or cringe or even which you’ll be ostracized or even punished. Also the latter is a moving target while the former is not. It’s not surprising they choose to listen to non-conflicting voices, and it’s lazy to just blame Republicans as if there’s nothing for the left to learn from and improve on other than ways to beat Republicans.
I’ve been a pubescent young man once and we have all been idiots laughing at stupid shit, trying to be edgy. I guess that number will change once they’ll get more mature.
College (if they go), is when these boys pulled out of their comfort zone and thrown into a huge mixer with a huge variety of new people and ideas. I imagine there’s a reason they only see this trend in “high school boys”.
@Kata1yst@trashhalo@VanillaGorilla Yep. Hence why conservatives keep calling college “woke” and “liberal indoctrination.” Funny how reality and not living in denial makes people more left.
In the 2022 Monitoring the Future survey, the largest group of senior boys, more than two-fifths, claimed no politics at all, answering the liberal-conservative question with “none of the above” or “I don’t know.” Nearly one-fifth identified as moderate. Only 36 percent selected liberal or conservative as an ideology, and only there did the trend emerge.
I’m not as sold on “trending conservative” as I am “undecided on political ideology” +/-60% didn’t say liberal or conservative.
When I was in high school I was convinced I was conservative. It actually was the reason for a relationship ending at the time. But after I graduated I realized how left leaning I actually was. No one knows who the hell they are in high school.
Yeah, me too. Though I was taken on by the whole “radical liberal left being oversensitive” thing. I thought of women as equal, but the “femimazis” were extreme. I thought non-heterosexual and non-binary were a bit odd, but they can do what they want, why should I care, but I was the “LGBT propaganda” was too much. I thought people fleeing from wartorn regions deserved another chance, but the “sjws are just letting anyone and everyone in, and they can do whatever they want because otherwise it would be racism”.
I would call myself right wing, but practically all of my opinions were very far from it because my youtube overloaded brain thought that the “left” were just a bunch of idle people getting looking what to get offended by today. Only later at uni did I find out how overblown the whole “SJW” youtube thing was, and how much more insane and damaging the other extreme was.
And I believe that this is very much the case, people in school aren’t “right wing” because they carefully thought about life and society, but because all they hear about the “left” is this comically exaggerated notion that they’re touchy freaks who just want to scream how they’re oppressed by everything. Ironically, what got me out of the stupid right wing youtube company was left wing youtube with hour long videos exposing how that “SJW” narrative is just manipulation. But by the time they make one long detailed video exposing some false story, 1000 more of them pop out.
Honestly, the large portion of the internet is just poisonous, especially youtube. The sooner people learn to think and examine sources (use the internet), the better off we’re all be.
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My first election out of high school I voted for a right wing candidate because that’s what my Dad voted for, but also because I was entrenched in Christian ideaology and patriarchal propoganda.
After that I started paying a bit more attention to politics and slowly moved to the left with a few leaps along the way. Nowadays I find the Labor party of Aus to be about as conservative as I can stand. I can barely hide my disgust with anything to the right of them.
Real life experience can be far more radicalising than any immature ideas you inherent in high school.
Edit: My major leaps were: Having an employer illegally underpay me, seeing my friends lose ‘stable’ jobs in 2008, having a close friend come out as gay, leaving the church, volunteering with unhoused people, living in the UK, living in a rental controlled by a landlord with over 100 properties, and doing disaster relief work.
I bet this happens to a lot of people unless they get sucked into a YouTube/truthsocial echochamber rabbit hole.
I totally could have gone down that route if I were younger. I spent a good amount of time reading conspiracy theories online before YouTube existed.
Yeah living through the fifth once-in-a-generation crisis in this generation is powerful left-wing propaganda.
What effect did the UK change your political views?
I spent nearly every dollar I had saved to live in London, and don’t think I’d ever seen such visible displays of wealth disparity once I got there. I got a good paying job but often struggled to save and pay all my bills.
I got to live through the Brexit debate while living behind a chip shop in a poorer, multicultural neighbourhood and heard all the bullshit about immigration being directed at brown people while I worked there as an immigrant myself but because I was white I was largely accepted.
I learned a new level of contempt for the pointless wealth of the monarchy and had to deal with a boss who was plainly bad at his job but because he had an OBE everyone around me worshipped him like he could do no wrong.
I also worked for some very large companies and realised they aren’t anything special, just willing to exploit more people.
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Oh I see, yes that sounds eye opening
The left needs to own healthy masculinity and properly address very legitimate issues that disproportionally hurt boys in our society.
Otherwise we will lose a whole generation to toxic male role models in the manosphere.
I read a great WaPo article on this recently. Basically on the left, no one can define healthy masculinity and it’s really opened up a spot for the right wing to swoop in and define it for us.
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The left side of politics has always struggled to bring people along for the journey, they can advocate for people but building a coherent argument and inspiring people to come along for the ride will always be their downfall. They cannot achieve progressive change if they fail to recognize the concerns of the right.
You’re right. Nothing that’s truly valuable in legislation is simple. It’s hard to turn something complicated into a sound byte without making shit up, and the Left in most countries have to be careful alienating the intellectuals if they start making shit up. We don’t vote for bullshit.
The Right has no problem making shit up and those who vote for them are not really affected by it. When the Notch Baby bullshit was going on (a US thing… there was basically a big hoax about a generation being owed money, and a lot of politicians ran with it), I didn’t know a single right-leaning voter who would give the least bit of a shit that they were voting for people who were willfully taking advantage of the elderly. I guarantee a left-party candidate who pulled that shit would lose by a landslide.
So the Right can bad-faith point out a concern that “toxic masculinity” is just “masculinity” and a good thing. They know the Left can’t soundbyte their way out of it because it’s not a one-liner to say “it’s not about masculinity or feminity, it’s about not being a dick and all of us helping the underdog”. It’s VERY easy to sell people who aren’t the underdog on victim complexes.
Shame that the concerns of the right are mostly just disguised misogyny, racism and classism.
John Oliver, John Iadorola from the damage report, Mike Figuredo from the Humanist report, Kyle Kulenski from secular talk, David Doel from the rational national, Sam Seder from the majority report, Lance from the Serfs, Matt Binder from the majority report. Left leaning positive male role models. I’m sure there is more but they stand out as I watch them every week.
JOHN OLIVER IS A REAL PERSON?
No he is just a meme on r/pics
They do, but they are not mainstream. “Average person” probably never heard of them.
We’ve also got Brian Tyler Cohen, Hasan Piker, David Pakman as well. Beau Of The 5th Column I know has already been listed, but I feel when it comes to instilling change in the hearts and mind of radicalized young men, he’s up there with Hasan and BTC.
Jon Stewart, Trae Crowder, and Beau of the Fifth Column are three more excellent examples of positive male role models.
Trae Crowder = Best Crowder
🤮
^the emoji is a link
I fucking love Beau
Who is our Jordan Peterson equivalent?
Reporters and intellectuals can be role models but they are more passive than actively preaching what masculinity should mean.
This, want it or not, it is not hard for boys to feel incredibly alienated in the left hemisphere. We gone from “girls have issues too” to “only girls can have issues”. It’s ridiculous, and even more ridiculous when you remember that girls reach their growth spurt sooner than boys, effectively eliminating many of the purported advantages of boys over girl, making them feel even more alienated.
I’m pretty far left and in my entire life I’ve never experienced “only girls can have issues” as more than an extreme fringe statement.
What I tend to see regarding men is how they, too, are victims of toxic masculinity, taught to internalize their emotions until they have literal breakdowns. The Left gives a fuck about that, and it’s one of the cited reasons they have problems with toxic masculinity.
I wonder where you get the impression that “the left” is saying “only girls can have issues”? It feels to me like people have spun this reactionary tale in the backlash to feminism but no one is actually saying that.
It is like every time someone tries to talk about issues women face this is seen as an attack on men. Which I find frankly ridiculous. At the same time, in many cases when people bring up boy’s or men’s issues they will only do so while simultaneously attacking feminist talking points. This is especially prevalent on social media platforms like Reddit and YouTube.
It does seem like anti-feminists and sometimes straight up misogynistic people have monopolized the entire discussion surrounding men’s issues. When you look up information regarding issues men face it is really hard to not end up in a hateful corner of the internet. Some of these sources do not actually have the people looking for help at heart, they are simply anti-feminist and will even go so far as to provide inaccurate information or withhold information just so that they can keep up their narrative.
This is very much a talking point by “only girls can have issues” people.
“Men don’t have issues, men’s rights groups only exist to spread misogyny!”
That is a key point of why the idea that men’s issues are not taken seriously is spreading, because simply talking about / focusing on men’s issues quickly gets people labled as misogynists.
This both gets people to stop caring about the idea of misogynism, because “apparently simply talking about men’s issues is misogyny”, and thereby also pushes people to develop more problematic views.
This is simply not true.
I was a “Fox News”-viewing turd in high school, too.
Conservativism mirrored what my parents viewed at the time. Seemed edgy. And offered simple solutions to all of life’s problems.
Then I grew up. Five years later, I was voting for Barack Obama and terrified of Sarah Palin.
That is actually an easy trap to fall into because that was the environment you were raised in. I am glad you got out of that trap when many do not.
In turn, my parents are gradually escaping.
My dad was a Never Trumper who we gently led out. And Jan 6th made him an “independent” (he votes for Democrats now). My mom is a loyal Republican (somehow)… but agrees Trump is an arrogant piece of garbage and not the horse to bet on.
No one just “grows up”. You had a set of experiences that allowed you to think beyond the confines of what your parents taught you.
Most never do.
It’s not a natural process.
And this is why Republicans are so opposed to higher education. My dad grew up in a conservative household - like, so conservative that my grandad would respond to the question of who he was going to vote for with “I’m a Republican. I vote for the nominee,” and it wasn’t until he went to college and met people with life experiences that were different from his that my dad began to question the things he was told about the world when he was growing up.
It’s a lot easier to convince you that your life sucks because
Jewishbrown immigrants are taking all the jobs and women won’t date you because, actually, they’re the sexist ones (and it definitely has nothing to do with the fact that you treat them like sex toys) if you’ve never been beyond 40 miles of where you were born and have never been outside of a town where everybody looks like you.The rate of girls identitying as liberal is significantly higher and unlike the conservative boys, the rate hasn’t started dropping off. Probably because the girls face actual threats to their freedoms, while the conservative boys’ complaints are about a bunch of imaginary nonsense.
But of course it’s boys who get the headline. The hill is a right wing dumpster bin.
Flaming dumpster bin!
This is definitely right-wing trash. However, we should be using headlines like this to fire up the country. Everyone knows that “republican” men think they have the last say about reproductive rights. Let’s use their own “reports” to show those women that their boyfriends/husbands/fathers think they own them.
That’s a little bit sexist
Ah yes, the education gap is imaginary nonsense.
Are you hearing yourself? Because what you’re saying is not only gross but grossly dismissive. Be better.
Oh shit an education gap? Better attack minorities, take away women’s rights, burn a bunch of books and accelerate full speed into the brick wall of climate change.
The reality is that conservatives aren’t trying to address any actual problems facing young men, they’re just trying to turn their disillusionment into votes and gun sales.
Calmly approach anyone in the education sector with this study, without the “nobody cares about men anymore!” theatrics and you’ll have millions of people – mostly “leftists” – with thoughts on how to improve things.
But do things ever improve? Nope! Liberal decisions generally only place any value on the well-being of women and minorities, while conservative decisions generally only place any value on the bank accounts of those making the decisions. You have to go very far left before people start caring about men, and the people that far left aren’t numerous enough to create any meaningful change.
Yeah that’s why they’re always pushing things like “a higher minimum wage (but only for women and minorities)” and “universal healthcare (and by universal we mean just women and minorities)”.
The federal minimum wage hasn’t changed. We don’t have universal healthcare, but we do have mandatory enrichment of private insurance companies’ pockets, thanks to Obama.
And who votes against it?
Seemingly, nobody’s voting on it at all either way. This was 2 years ago!
It’s just journalism in general. “Girls are liberal” is pretty much a non-story, it’s expected. You don’t publish those.
“High school boys are becoming more conservative” can be seen as surprising by many, and thus newsworthy.
The verbalized complaints, yes.
The passive misandry that’s pushing boys right is a very real thing.
Please define passive misandry
A dismissal or lack of consideration for the unique issues facing men and boys and the unique solutions they require. Focusing exclusively on women and girls. Viewing boys as defective girls.
In this thread, here’s a few specific examples
It’s passive because it’s not direct and focused. It’s more neglect than abuse. Men’s problems are not just secondary; they’re not even worth consideration, and men should just Fix It Themselves.
Schools in particular are extremely geared towards focusing on girls and their successful development.
Yeah, I’m not buying it. The Patriarchy is real, and whatever imagined neglect you think is happening is so far removed from the reality of what women have to deal with all day every day that it’s laughable. Won’t someone think of the poor dominant class?
Conservatives are thinking of them. They’re the only ones, apparently. Is it any wonder that’s where their allegiance goes?
“Haha, fuck you and everyone like you” is a terrible way to persuade people to your side.
What sucks is that conservatives don’t generally act in most men’s best interests either. It’s just a grift to get us to buy in to their brand and vote for them. Look at people like Andrew Tate.
12th Grade boys are a dominant class? Not only is that statement totally lacking empathy but its also ignoring the evidence that Girls now graduate High School and College at rates well exceeding Boys. If there is a dominant “class” for the 12th Graders it’s Girls and not Boys.
What male -specific rights are currently threatened or actively being removed?
Recess. Unstructured outdoor play including monitored roughhousing.
Do you have kids? I do. My boy has more than enough unstructured outdoor play and comes home scraped up all the time. I’ve volunteered as a lunch / recess monitor. They’re doing just fine and doing young boy things.
Good anecdotal evidence, the numbers are against you
Did you know that we currently still have almost exactly the same school form that we had when school was for boys only? It was literally designed with only boys in mind. That the sexism girls face, which makes them more compliant and more pleasing for teachers, is now seen as an attack on boys is hilarious. When you want them to be equally liked by the teachers you will have to punish boys as much as girls for being rough. You have to encourage boys as well to stay clean, play domestic shit indoors and care more for their social appearance. Because that’s what giving girls their current “advantage”.
Lol recess is a right now?
lol what are you smoking? Recess hasn’t gone anywhere lmao. In fact, I fucking wish I had as cool of a playground for recess as my nephew does when I was a kid. Shit’s fancy as fuck, all kinds of monkey bars, rock walls, a puke-a-tron that puts the merry-go-rounds of old to shame, etc… Mind you, he goes to school in a super liberal school district of an already very liberal state. The park district playgrounds have gotten way cooler too, one of the playgrounds at my local park has a fucking zipline now.
The fact that fucking recess is the best you could come up with, and it’s just blatantly not even fucking true, says it all.
Also, girls like outdoor recess too, MORE so than boys, actually, in my experience. What a weird thing to gender.
The gender performance gap in primary and secondary education is, however, well documented, with girls outperforming boys to a statistically significant degree in ELA across the board, but with variability from school district to school district in math. Interestingly, boys tend to outperform girls in math mostly in higher income school districts, suggesting that two things can be true at once: patriarchal attitudes around boys and math performance can and do persist, mostly in white bread communities, AND, the educational system as a whole may be failing some boys, mostly in lower income communities.
Where the discussion gets gross, of course, is where MRA types use these statistics as a justification for misogyny, or on the flip side where those sensitive to that go out of their way to wave stats like this away, sometimes even making a ‘boys will be boys’ argument that is historically problematic for completely different reasons and in the end amounts to blaming the kids for the problem.
Again, two things can be true at once - society is still male dominated and victimizes women in many facets of life. At the same time, the little boys struggling at school … mostly in poor neighborhoods … aren’t the root of the problem, and certainly aren’t the ‘dominant class’ referred to above. The conversation should not be a zero sum game where recognizing the challenges of one group means you are trivializing the challenges of another.
(Though in fairness many do try to make it thus, so the caution is understandable).
We can trade anecdotes (and insults) all day long and none of it means a thing. You asked for a specific example and I gave you one. Just the first one off the top of my head. Schools in my area are canceling unstructured outdoor play time, which hurts boys more than girls.
Here’s one you’re probably more familiar with, since it’s nationwide: men being pushed out of careers in education.
I’m sure you’ll just move the goalposts on that one too though. “Ah but it’s not GOVERNMENT doing it so it doesn’t count!” or “I know a male teacher so it doesn’t count!”
It’s almost like he’d been told the opinion he was supposed to hold and then had to frantically explain why when someone finally asked him.
Several boys only organizations or programs have changed to accepting all genders. Meanwhile, most girls only organizations or programs have remained girls only.
So what? That has nothing to do with anyone’s rights. Girls are facing having their body autonomy stripped away and the best you can come up with for boys is that they don’t have boys only orgs at school anymore?
Conservatives are so fucking soft.
This is right wing nonsense right here ^
What you just said (even if it were true, which I don’t actually believe to be the case) what you said is NOT-infringing on anyone’s rights.
Gendered organizations take away valuable educational opportunities from the opposite gender when they have no alternative. Since this is about high schoolers, it’s worth noting that when I was in high school, there were some extra-curricular educational opportunities that were girls-only and had no open-enrollment equivalent whatsoever. Of course, if those same clubs only allowed boys, there would be a shitstorm and people would probably end up losing their jobs over it.
WTF does that matter? Are you seriously making the argument that the only people who matter are ones whose rights are threatened?
Attitudes like this are the reason the alt-right is rising in this country. Good grief there’s so many opinions in here that are just rank, literally stomach turning.
Talking about the issues women and girls face is not an attack on men and boys.
Talking exclusively about the issues women and girls face is, though.
Why? Following your logic it would also be sexist against women to write an article or start a discussion without addressing women’s issues as well. Wouldn’t it also be racist and ableist if you don’t talk about the issues minorities face? Don’t you see how this doesn’t make sense?
It’s not discrimatory against all other “groups” if you bring up the issues of one group.
This frightening. We are starting to see more boys becoming incels?
Anecdotally I want to say boys have always felt more conservative around that age, especially when I was in highschool in the early 2000s. Granted I lived my teen years in the south, and this probably more of a cope than an actual explanation. There definitely seems to be a lot more active targeting of young men by right wing influencers now. In the past right wing media seemed to always be the domain of old people.
I went through a really weird phase in my life when I was kind of somewhere between conservative and neoliberal. And that was when I lived for 5 years in Arizona of all places. Now I am so far to the left that there isn’t really much more room for me to head. Recruiting conservatives at young ages apparently seems to be the key move for fundamentalists of all brands. This has been time-tested by the likes Al Qaida, ISIS, and the Taliban.
It’s absurd, yes, but nothing new. Many of the kids at my own school are leaning to the far right, without ever stopping and wondering if it even profits them. All they see are a couple of Instagram reels and hear “global leader” and “country’s decade” and decide they’ll follow the government blindly even if the most harm will be done to them. Worshipping your political idols is a way of life, and anyone who doesn’t see the very same line as yours is an anti-nationalist. You might have guessed by now, alas, I speak of India.
Maybe kid watching too much Andrew Turd or Lobster cult? That’s why de-platforming is so important. These people are genuinely harmful to the world.
Grifters are a symptom, not the cause. I agree with getting rid of them, but more will follow.
As long as young men and boys see that they are discriminated against, devalued, and excluded, there will always be grifters ready to convince them that their problems are caused by some other group of normal people instead of the people actually doing the discrimination and steering the values of society.
I was a card carrying Libertarian after high school, before my sense of empathy developed more fully.
In many ways I still consider myself libertarian, but moreso in anti authority leaning than Republican but with a cooler label. Many of my peers in highschool and university clicked with the pro guns, pro expression sentiment, but when it came actually letting queer people and religious minorities live their lives, or allowing women control over their own bodies and healthcare, they always seemed to side with the Authoritarians in power threatening the to restrict these people. Not to mention many of them had no problem with authority as long as it came from a corporate entity or oligarch.
I still identify with the term Libertarian, but have stopped using it because it truly doesn’t represent what it was supposed to mean anymore.
There is such a thing as a “Libertarian Socialist”, which seems to be what you are looking for. A lot of Libertarian Socialists also just call themselves “anarchists”; and “anarchism” essentially just means something like “anti-authority” or “anti-hierarchy”.
If you want to maybe explore it a bit:
Homage to Catalonia is a book written by George Orwell where he tells of his time in Spain fighting alongside the anarchists and socialists in Spain (against the fascists supported by Hitler and Mussolini, and against the republicans backed by Stalin).
The Dispossessed written by Ursula K. Le Guin; it’s a sci-fi story about a society living on a moon, who are anti-capitalists and supposedly anarchists (whether they are anarchists or not is one of the focus points of the story).
If you just want to read theory instead, you can also search for Pyotr Kropotkin, and Emma Goldberg.
Thanks. Seeing Orwell’s name attached to one of your recs is a good sign.
yeah it’s a shame that libertarian basically means closeted republican these days
is there a better term?
I’d consider myself pretty libertarian-minded in the whole ‘you live your life and I live mine’ style, but not in the ‘let corporations do whatever they want to workers and the environment’ style
That’s called being a Democrat
Democrat isn’t really an ideology though as much as it’s a coalition of voters. They can be anyone from Communists and socialists to conservatives who don’t align with the Republican party. The majority of politicians within the party tend to be free market liberals akin to Clinton, with a few European style Social Democrats akin to Bernie Sanders and AOC. As someone who supports gun ownership and rejects the existence of corporate welfare and monopolies, I might not identify with many of the politicians within the Democratic party. Likewise I take issue with the Republican’s stances towards human rights, the establishment of religion, and putting the legitimacy of elections into question. I might be more comfortable with voting Democrat, but the party’s platform would not be how I would describe my ideology.
A “Democrat” is a member of the “Democratic Party” of the USA, it is not a political ideology in itself. Democrats are usually economic Liberals and don’t care that much about workers or the environment, but some are Social Democrats (Bernie Sanders). They are also usually socially progressive.
The Republican Party is also composed mainly of economic liberals; however, they are typically socially conservative.
And honestly, ‘conservative’ shouldn’t be a bad word either. But it’s been morphed into this fascist hate machine, and it’s hard to see what you’ve become when you’re on the inside.
It’s not like Democrats are screaming to tear down the Walmarts and Dollar Generals, and bring back local businesses and repairable products. Neither side is all that great, it’s just that one is teetering on genocidal. I’m not saying don’t vote democrat, because you absolutely have to if you want to head off what’s coming. But we need to start looking at this problem more holistically, if we don’t just want to perpetuate it in future generations.
The term “fundamentalist” was coined because “conservative” was a bad word, and that was over a century ago. Conservative hate is nothing new.
Source? I never heard fundamentalism was coined as an alternative to saying conservative. Fundamentalism could be described as conservative but I don’t think the 1920s fundamentalists were trying to avoid that in any way.
Republicans love co-opting things after all. Libertarians in that sense are just republicans who realized saying that is an automatic red flag.
I often go with Anti-Authoritarian when describing my beliefs. I’ve played around with the Anarchist label as well, though it seems to have the same affect on Communists who want an edgier label (which is ironic, considering both groups have clashed with each other throughout history)
I like many concepts of Anarchy, but until we have Star Trek levels of free unlimited power and food, I don’t think it would work.
There have been examples of anarchy working. Unfortunately, most of the ones I know of were around during World War 2 and got crushed between 2 larger opponents, or backstabbed by one of them.
Anarchists - and other socialists in Catalonia - during the Spanish Civil War, were stuck between the fascists and the republicans (Soviets), sided with the Soviets and ended up being betrayed. Homage to Catalonia by Orwell is a good book about the civil war and the anarchists.
Korean People’s Association in Manchuria were destroyed by Japan a few years before WW2 during a war between China and Japan IIRC, and apparently some of its leaders were also killed by “Korean communists” (the same ones that ended up forming North Korea).
The Black Army of Ukraine fought the Red and White armies at separate times; one time they joined the Red Army against the White Army, and were betrayed.
You might have noticed a pattern there, which is also why a lot of anarchists are not found of Marxist-Leninists or Stalinists.
Do you believe in a democratic government undertaking tasks of social benefit? Like building roads and rails
as long as the money isn’t being wasted or contracts being handed out to companies owned by politician’s friends, yeah
Same. The world seemed so simple back then, until I matured. I suspect a lot of people are emotionally stuck
I can also relate, a classic libertarian utopia sounds great until you realise poor people exist. I think a lot of individuals are just afraid of personal growth because it often means admitting you were wrong.
Well, it’s not something you just institute overnight. Just like with communism, if you try that you’d end up with a pretty big mess, because people will manipulate the framework for their own personal gains. Instead it’s something you work towards slowly, through education and efforts to balance the system until it’s not really needed anymore.
The keys always have to be:
Our actions weave into the fabric of society, and future generations are formed from that same fabric. It takes time to shift how our nature manifests into actual behavior.
Humans don’t work that way and never will.
That is just capitalist propaganda
Are the history books capitalist propaganda too, then? Because I’m not aware of any instance in history when a stable society emerged with no governing authority and no one taking advantage of anyone else. To my knowledge, at least one of those things always ended up happening, and quickly.
Most humans are selfish and jealous by nature. Not all, but most, and it only takes one jerk to ruin it for everyone. Any system that ignores this fact, and does not have some strategy for dealing with it, is doomed to failure.
The only way I foresee your vision ever becoming reality is if a technological revolution enables a post-scarcity economy, as seen in some science fiction like Star Trek. This could remove the main driver for humanity’s selfishness. Maybe. But we aren’t even close to having the technology needed to accomplish that.
The trend shows identification to either label is falling. Really reads as a way to spin what is likely a move even more left by many high schoolers as a move right by pretending no other axis exist than conservative/liberal. Only 35% said either label. The overwhelming majority didnt pick a label.
Yeah ok, but highschool boys are fucking dumb as shit too. It’s probably the same bunch of idiots that followed Andrew Taint
I mean that’s the problem, isn’t it? What is it about these assholes like Tate that appeals to young men?
Power fantasies.
The same thing fascism seemingly has to offer: easy solutions to complex problems.
I’m not saying (especially white) young men are treated unfair but as one myself it’s easy to come to the conclusion as you do feel a rift between fulfilling conservative societal norms you grew up with and learned from your elders for which isn’t really a space left anymore except of conservative circles so you do kinda feel like being privileged is a burden because you think you have to fulfill more expectations than other groups and I think there’s a lack of addressing this in public discourse without simply demonizing young males for trying to find their identity in a way that also includes a healthy relationship with one’s own masculinity. If you discuss this I feel like you’re quickly drifting into incel and alpha bullshit territory because they’re the only ones addressing those problems but of course they don’t offer actual solutions because that’s not really part of their business model.
It’s important to recognize that fascists are not evil comic book villains. If you are a member of their ethnostate they will come off quite pleasant. They will say “You are beautiful, you are kind, you are wise. We are building a utopia and we’d like you to join us.” Then eventually they will say “We cannot build a utopia because they stand in our way. They are ugly, they are cruel, they are stupid.” And then before you know it you are building gas chambers.
It’s also fun to be in a group and authorian regimes usually have nice aesthetics. It can be very tempting when a group includes you and you think you’ll have a purpose as a human being by joining.
Maybe we should found a fascist group just without the fascism and it’s including for everyone where everyone dresses nice and we march together and some guy holds energetic speeches about random stuff like that one time his dog ate an entire birthday cake and there’s a specific greeting we use.
Unfortunately fascism can’t actually work without an “other” to be a scapegoat. Fascism frames history as the struggle of an infallible ethnostate towards prosperity. Therefore any imperfection in the state is the result of the influence of “others” working against the state. Without an “other” fascists would actually need to take responsibility for society’s shortcomings.
aw hell, uniforms by Hugo Boss?
Zoomer MAGAs with gay friends/relatives feel like a blister just waiting to burst.
Theory: Entertainment propaganda - like Fox News and (for the non-elderly) performative alt-right influencers/male-rights-douchebags - succeeds for the same reasons as addictive drugs. They introduce a quick dopamine rush of easy answers, validation, and a feeling of euphoric purpose.
Funny, people are mostly blaming the left for not adressing young boys mental health, but not the right for manipulating them into becoming sexist and violent.
Because we’ve done a bad job of reconciling everything popular culture tells you it means to be a man or manly or sexually attractive with everything popular culture also says is outdated or wrong or cringe or even which you’ll be ostracized or even punished. Also the latter is a moving target while the former is not. It’s not surprising they choose to listen to non-conflicting voices, and it’s lazy to just blame Republicans as if there’s nothing for the left to learn from and improve on other than ways to beat Republicans.
I’ve been a pubescent young man once and we have all been idiots laughing at stupid shit, trying to be edgy. I guess that number will change once they’ll get more mature.
College (if they go), is when these boys pulled out of their comfort zone and thrown into a huge mixer with a huge variety of new people and ideas. I imagine there’s a reason they only see this trend in “high school boys”.
@Kata1yst @trashhalo @VanillaGorilla Yep. Hence why conservatives keep calling college “woke” and “liberal indoctrination.” Funny how reality and not living in denial makes people more left.
That’s when I went from being conservative to liberal, for sure. Still moving further left, 10 years later.
Colleges are also seeing less men succeed in the environment. Men are struggling in the classroom and with mental health.
I think we all agree young people are getting a shitty deal with today’s society. It’s hard to think positively for them.
I’m not as sold on “trending conservative” as I am “undecided on political ideology” +/-60% didn’t say liberal or conservative.
When I was in high school I was convinced I was conservative. It actually was the reason for a relationship ending at the time. But after I graduated I realized how left leaning I actually was. No one knows who the hell they are in high school.
Yeah, me too. Though I was taken on by the whole “radical liberal left being oversensitive” thing. I thought of women as equal, but the “femimazis” were extreme. I thought non-heterosexual and non-binary were a bit odd, but they can do what they want, why should I care, but I was the “LGBT propaganda” was too much. I thought people fleeing from wartorn regions deserved another chance, but the “sjws are just letting anyone and everyone in, and they can do whatever they want because otherwise it would be racism”.
I would call myself right wing, but practically all of my opinions were very far from it because my youtube overloaded brain thought that the “left” were just a bunch of idle people getting looking what to get offended by today. Only later at uni did I find out how overblown the whole “SJW” youtube thing was, and how much more insane and damaging the other extreme was.
And I believe that this is very much the case, people in school aren’t “right wing” because they carefully thought about life and society, but because all they hear about the “left” is this comically exaggerated notion that they’re touchy freaks who just want to scream how they’re oppressed by everything. Ironically, what got me out of the stupid right wing youtube company was left wing youtube with hour long videos exposing how that “SJW” narrative is just manipulation. But by the time they make one long detailed video exposing some false story, 1000 more of them pop out.
Honestly, the large portion of the internet is just poisonous, especially youtube. The sooner people learn to think and examine sources (use the internet), the better off we’re all be.
So incredibly true