How The Left Lost Young Men

As young men grow lonelier, right-wing influencers filled the void

Amid a cataclysmic shift that saw Trump increase his support among almost every single demographic group this election, young men between the ages of 18-29 turned out in remarkable numbers. This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise after Trump courted them through a nearly three-hour Joe Rogan Experience podcast interview, an appearance Kamala’s campaign ultimately decided to skip for their own candidate.

But this swing goes deeper than Trump’s alternate media tour, into the deep social disconnection that many young men are experiencing.

In the U.S., I believe that the parasocial relationships they form with right-trending online influencers and podcasters is a root cause of what we are seeing. Young men, experiencing unprecedented levels of social disconnection and with a perhaps hardwired tendency to gravitate towards internet tough guys, are uniquely vulnerable to being pied piper-ed towards the right. There’s a deep tragedy here, as economically disenfranchised men voted against policies specifically meant to help their income bracket. If the left doesn’t learn to respond and speak to them in a language they understand, we are in deep trouble.

I’m not surprised by the way young men voted, which falls in line with a trend of ideological dimorphism between the sexes that has emerged all around the world, particularly among young people. A set of studies by Gallup made headlines earlier this year by showing remarkable data to this effect. All around the world, starting around 2010, women began to trend progressive, while boys began swinging hard to the right. In the U.S. for example, women aged 18 to 30 are a striking 30 percentage points more liberal than males the same age. In the UK the gap is 25 percentage points. In South Korea, it's a stunning +50% chasm.

So what's going on with the lads? I think I have an idea:

A decline in opportunities to form critical inter-male mentor relationships, like youth sports, has left a gaping vacuum for young males. Liberal media is largely disinterested in reaching them as a demographic. Into this gap have stepped a cohort of right-leaning tough-guy online celebrities, who have profited immensely by speaking directly to this group. All around the world, boys are engaged in one-way parasocial bonding with famous men who will never know their names but are happy to take their money. 

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Boys and Tough Guys on the Internet

I’m not going to try to sell you on the idea that the mainstream leftist ideological environment has made places like schools and white-collar workplaces increasingly hostile to men. Either you already believe this is the case, or you are allergic to the idea and just me mentioning it is turning you off of this piece.

But what matters is that many boys FEEL this way, that they are being persecuted and scorned by their environment. This feeling is pushing them right in droves.

And while you might disagree with me bitterly on the realness or validity of the reasons they have for doing so, we are likely aligned in that we think that this is an objectively bad thing. Young men are dangerous. A group of teenage boys without adult supervision has explosive potential. They fuck shit up. They start wars. The idea of a future where they throng to the extreme right is…. scary.

Right now, these boys are largely being lured towards the right by manosphere figures. They range wildly in their level of toxicity and helpfulness, from Jocko Willink, a former Navy SEAL turned phenomenally popular inspirational speaker, to Andrew Tate, a trollish former professional kickboxer and accused sex trafficker.

Willink’s message is framed in warlike terms but ultimately benign, mostly about waking up early, being a hyper-productive employee, and reading military memoirs to engender a stoic personal philosophy. Tate’s is a mishmash of street corner pimp misogyny and pseudo-theocratic arguments for polygamy. Jocko Willink is likely a positive influence on most of his listeners, though he leans towards the Fox News side of politics. Andrew Tate’s ideas are so noxious, and his adherents so annoying, he should be buried in the Nevada desert under a skull and crossbones sign like radioactive waste. Tate in particular has become so popular among schoolboys in the United Kingdom that the British government has been forced to respond. 

The Loss of the Male Mentor

What’s key here is that these figures are growing in influence among young men, because of a vacuum that has emerged around opportunities for male mentorship. Boys badly want guidance and leadership from older males. It’s hardwired into us somehow. But the number of male teachers in our education system has been in decline for decades, down to 23% from 30% in 1988. Minorities have it particularly tough. Only 6% of teachers in the U.S. are men of color. 

As a culture, we’ve also become deeply suspicious of men who show interest in creating a relationship or a friendship with a young boy. If you hear about a coach or a family friend who shows special interest in a boy, your first thought is usually pedophile. I’m not saying this isn’t a valid concern, but I think that boys ultimately suffer without these opportunities for guidance and structure from older males. 

These trends have been ongoing since the 1980s, but as with many things, the pandemic tipped us forward into the abyss. Boys participation in youth sports, one of the few remaining venues for boys to find male mentorship, has been in decline since 2008, and was frozen during the heights of the Covid-19 pandemic.

So in the darkness of the lockdowns, increasingly surrounded by a culture that can feel like it doesn’t value them, boys turned the tough guy voices speaking to them on YouTube and Instagram and TikTok. Towards Willink’s militaristic stoicism, or Andrew Tate’s nihilistic misogyny, or towards Jordan Peterson, a Canadian academic turned pseudo-spiritual leader. 

Without strong male mentors in their real lives, they’ve turned to these digitized reflections, imprinting on them like baby ducklings on a hunting decoy.   

It’s hard to articulate how badly many boys and young men want guidance from older males. My father, who was doing research on probation offices in the Bronx, described watching as a unit of young male offenders met with an older, reformed felon in his 70s, as part of the “credible messenger” program, where former gangsters are empowered to be community activists.

He described the palpable hunger for attention from the young men, drawn from communities stripped of older males by Rockefeller drug laws and high homicide rates, as they gathered around the graying former criminal, sitting bolt upright in their seats where minutes before they had been slouched with hats and hoodies, pulled over their eyes. Later, one of the female probation officers would quietly point out to my father that this man was getting a level of attention and respect from the young offenders that would be challenging for her to elicit.

To a young male listener, online influencers at least give the strong impression that they care about them, in particular Peterson, who talks with such emotion about the plight of today’s young men that he sometimes cries on camera. All around us, boys and young men are forming parasocial relationships with these men, who are more than happy to take their money and YouTube subscriptions, because there are no males in their lives to fill this role. A 2023 survey by think tank Equimundo Center for Masculinities and Social Justice reported that 65% of men aged 18 to 23 told researchers that “no one [in my life] really knows me well.” 

 There’s a long-circulating internet meme about manosphere kingpin Joe Rogan: 

Back when I was a kid you didn’t need Joe Rogan Your best friend had a 27 year-old brother who was a fucking loser who would smoke pot in a room with blacklight posters and tell you that the Mayans invented cell phones

It’s a funny joke, but there’s something to this. 

Caveman Roots and Political Takeaways

But why does it have to be mentorship from men, some readers are now demanding to know. Why shouldn’t boys be able to learn from females?

In the simplest terms, young men evolved to listen to the voices of warlords. We, or a lot of us anyway, are designed as blunt instruments and have some underlying evolutionary programming that, especially when we are younger, inclines us to listen more to not just older males, but to older males who seem tough and strong, like someone who would be an effective war-leader. Is this a less helpful trait in 2024 than it was in the Neolithic era? Certainly! But it’s deeply hardwired.

Looking back at the names of the men who are gaining an increasing share of the loyalty of today’s young males, a trend emerges. Willink is a former special forces operator, Tate and Rogan are former fighters. Shawn Ryan, another former SEAL with a podcast who trends towards the conspiratorial right, boasts over 2 million subscribers to his YouTube Channel.

Ok, so boys are getting really into tough guys on YouTube, but what does that have to do with their political affiliations? Well, for various reasons, progressives have completely ceded the tough-guy sphere to the right. There are simply no figures on the left with equivalent appeal. Can you imagine following Chris Cuomo or Ezra Klein into battle? Me either.

So instead, what you have is a situation where the loudest voices speaking to these young males in a way they can hear are from the right, and along with helpful meditations on stoicism or the utility of deadlifts in your workout routines, they also throw in a lot of right-wing culture war aphorisms. More broadly, young men who don’t necessarily have a handle on economics or foreign policy, have decided that the left is filled with limp-wristed ivory tower types who hate them, and that the right is more masculine. This is a big problem.

My Proposal

So what are we all to do? If progressives want to be competitive in this arena, they need to get real and stop acting like boys and girls are psychologically interchangeable. The left is severely hampered by ideological blinders on this. Progressives tend to, at least in public, adhere to a tabula rasa view of human nature which treats behavioral differences between the sexes as a result of socialization, and are allergic to the idea that we have hard-wired psychological tendencies. They should get over this delusion quickly. 

In order to combat and reverse this trend, a multi-pronged approach is needed. At a ground level, we must revitalize and invest in the venues in which boys connect with real-life mentors. This includes subsidizing youth sports, increasing hiring of male teachers through our school system, and thinking about creating new cultural institutions to replace the important ones we’ve lost, like the decline of the boxing gym.  

Secondly, we need to start thinking about pushing forward cultural figures, politicians and pop-philosophers, that young males will find relatable and impressive. Yes, I’m suggesting we get Ezra Klein on creatine and have him start doing some squats. Maybe we have Beto O’Rourke train for a Muay Thai fight. This is where a lot of educated liberal readers start rolling their eyes, but this is a proven and effective strategy. Mark Zuckerberg’s communications team, seemingly reacting to the Facebook founder’s devastatingly low popularity ratings, have successfully revitalized his public persona by having Zuck train in jiu jitsu, even competing in a public tournament. Yes, this sounds silly, but it’s what many men are hardwired to respect.

At a higher level, we on the left need to stop speaking in such a scornful way about boys. The discourse in a lot of academic and leftist intellectual circles is downright contemptuous towards males, especially white males, and they are picking up every bit of it. Stop with this “toxic masculinity” nonsense, it might play well at the NPR-listener dinner party, but its radioactive for important voting blocs. Young men are a valuable part of our society, not a pathology, and the left needs to do a better job of bringing them to the table.

As this election has shown, the stakes could not be higher. Let’s try and get this right next time around.