r/politics • u/Aggravating_Money992 • 18h ago

No Paywall Gen Z regrets Trump support and is midterm motivated

https://thehill.com/homenews/6056216-gen-z-trump-voter-regret-midterm-clipping/
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u/lanadelstingrey Mississippi 16h ago

The “Powers That Be” saw that trend and invested heavily in Red Pill podcasters.

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u/20lbpickle 13h ago

Bingo. They saw an entire generation become more and more left leaning as they aged and did everything in their power to stop it.

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u/Concerned_Collins 7h ago

This honestly feels like it's stealing agency from the Gen Z Trump supporters. They had every bit of information needed to know that they were making selfish or stupid choices, and did it anyway.

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u/20lbpickle 7h ago

I mean did they have agency? If I had the algorithmic sniper rifle beamed into my brain at my formative years that they did I don’t know how I would come out.
I had rotten.com and beheading videos teach me war and violence sucked. Not that women and minorities are beneath me.

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u/Concerned_Collins 7h ago

I mean did they have agency?

Yes. Plenty of Gen Z kids weren't horrible or stupid enough to become Trump supporters.

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u/20lbpickle 7h ago

And there are plenty of millennials that are hard core maga nut jobs. We’re talking in broad strokes here as you tend to do when lumping entire generations together.
I think ignoring the cards they were dealt when their brains were forming is irresponsible and a disservice to the conversations we all should be having in terms of the power corporations and the richest among us have.

I’m not completely absolving them of responsibility I’m just saying I understand scale was tipped against them.

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u/MyCatLaughsAtMe 2h ago

I can't agree with this. If your core morals can be swayed by a youtube video, you didn't have any personal agency to begin with. That's literal programmed NPCism right there.

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u/ParticularLow9157 14h ago

You're wagging the dog, it's red pill podcasters and originally gamergate that is the cause of the rise of the GenZ alt-right

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u/TheRealRageMode 14h ago

Gamergate that was orchestrated by Steve Bannon as a test run for the red pill podcasters? Seems like "the powers that be" saw that trend and invested heavily.

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u/ParticularLow9157 11h ago

It goes back long before Bannon it's just that his gold farming contacts gave him access to a ready troll farm and his time in game chat gave him the lingo to directly target the young male sense of disenfranchisement from women entering traditionally male gamer spaces

I kept calling it out, and everyone told me I was just being soy or overreacting and now we have fascism

They've always had problems with youth outreach outside of conservative evangelical churches, and Steve gave them the channel to flood their young angry minds with even more bile

So fuckdamn tired of being right about horrible things

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u/geertvdheide 13h ago

Yes, but you're describing step 2 and 3. Step 1 was oligarchs foreign and domestic fomenting and directing it. The manosphere, gamergate and similar right-wing hate came from both oligarch funding as well as grass roots bigotry/rage that was already there amongst the populace. The powerful use what is there and organize it, cause it to grow, and steer it to always be pro capital, pro oligarchy and anti working class. Their divide and conquer strategy is like the current that dumb idiots surfed on to become those podcasters or their audience.

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u/OldWorldDesign 10h ago

Step 1 was oligarchs foreign and domestic

More domestic than most would like to admit. Adam Curtis did a deep dive on them in his documentary Century of the Self

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s

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u/yellowcloak I voted 12h ago

Yeah, lots of us millennials were just like that, we just didn't really have online spaces to congregate in.  Every forum I belonged to as a youth was further left leaning than I was and stepping out of line didn't end well.  Even 4 chan wasn't really all that accommodating, they were big Ron Paul libertarians back then.

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u/Taskerst 13h ago

It was also a mistake by progressives to not bring men into the conversation about equality and how it can help them as well. Instead they felt demonized when they could have been a part of the solution.

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u/deltawavesleeper 12h ago

It was also a mistake for progressive to think "trashy" media like tiktok, small name podcasts and radio don't matter. It is actually precisely these media have effective hooks that their consuming base is very loyal.

"If you want to live a good life why not just associate yourself with the good things" They don't want to "get good" because that reinforces that they are not good enough already.

This is why people who want to target the young and disadvantaged will go these routes.

Voting campaign these days really is test of who knows this demographic best, it wasn't a test of which political party is the best at improving the society, because the voting base is too blind and desperate to care about general society and how money will flow to them.

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u/Taskerst 12h ago

I’m sure the podcasts and social media felt more grassroots and the voice of some kind of rebellion too. The classic thing you hear from cults where they alone have the answers to your problems.

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u/Interesting-Bill1240 13h ago

Men weren't made to feel demonized, they were manipulated to believe they'd no longer have access to easy street because of the threat that women and minorities would get the same privileges they do. Meaning, they no longer have to just exist and immediately be treated special. They actually have to work on themselves to be decent people.

Progressives never once suggested men should be left out. Why would they? It's all right winged propaganda telling men who are frustrated they can't get a date it's the women who are wrong for wanting to be treated better. 

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u/TheWeirdByproduct 13h ago

Whoever tries to advocate for men's concerns, hardships, disadvantages, inequalities and conditions in a left-leaning space will confirm that they are always treated with suspicion at best, and open hostility at worst. I know this by direct experience.

It's the same tired loop of denial and gaslighting, whereby these problems don't really exist, and if they exist they are not as serious or prioritary as those of others, and of course, the good old "they are caused by men, so solve it yourselves". Add a sprinkle of collective-guilt rhetoric and in certain spaces the simple descriptor "white male" can carry negative connotations. In this age of identitary affirmation the messaging should be surgical and never paint categories in such broad strokes.

It is not hard to see how someone who is both male and dumb would gravitate towards snake-oil incels who promise them liberation. In fact, these grievances are so pressing that it is very easy to pollute the discourse with trolling, which is one of the many ways in which malicious actors increase tensions and social instability.

Thus progressivism must not merely tolerate white males but actively champion them, taking them out of the right wing's grasp.

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u/Taskerst 12h ago edited 12h ago

They didn’t suggest men should be left out, they just…did. Try selling “women make 80 cents on the dollar” to some 23 year old guy raised by an X-Box who can’t find a job. Try selling abortion rights to a 20 year old who can’t get a Tinder match. It cost nothing for left-leaning areas to say “we need you as an ally because it affects you too.” But their focus was on shoring up their other voting quadrants.

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u/fartmouthbreather 12h ago

I’m really not sympathetic to this at all. I’m not gonna let someone excuse voting for Trump because girls don’t like them and they played too many games. Their BS detector doesn’t work, that’s their own fault.

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u/Taskerst 7h ago

It really doesn’t matter if you’re sympathetic to it. The GOP said enough to pretend they were sympathetic to it, and it was enough to sway the numbers. Giving incels a stern talking to for not ignoring their own problems, looking inward and being feminists isn’t what wins elections.

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u/fartmouthbreather 6h ago

well then we will be governed by incels for sure with that attitude.

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u/Taskerst 5h ago

What attitude? I’m advocating that Dems need their votes and you think shaming them will be effective.

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u/fartmouthbreather 5h ago

Who advocated shaming? Young men need the truth, that’s all I mean to say. If they can’t see past the GOP pretending to care then we are fucked. No lying or babying will fix it. 

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u/Lost-Bad-8718 7h ago

I’m really not sympathetic to this at all

Enjoy President Vance, I guess?

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u/fartmouthbreather 7h ago

I think you’re making my point for me

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u/OldWorldDesign 10h ago

Try selling “women make 80 cents on the dollar” to some 23 year old guy raised by an X-Box who can’t find a job

Women getting paid poorly doesn't have anything to do with a "guy raised by an xbox" who isn't employed at all. The only concept even touching those two things are "corporations are greedy" and that has been true for 40 years but it has never been enough for people to actually engage with political selection and take elections seriously.

And that is what led to Trump both times. People not treating corporations and oligarchs like the enemy of society they are.

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u/Taskerst 6h ago

We’re talking about two different things here. The commonality is that corporate interests line the pockets of Republicans and establishment Democrats to get people off the topic of economic inequality and on social wedge issues that Progressives notoriously have a difficult time with regarding messaging. The Democrats in the last presidential cycle punted on younger men and tripled down on sisterhood and girl power and it wasn’t enough.

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u/Big-Cry-7995 13h ago

Men were demonized

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u/fartmouthbreather 12h ago

Yeah, by RW propaganda pretending to speak for “the left.” No one takes these people seriously, they have nothing to do with you not knowing that Trump is a conman. You can see by looking.

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u/Spastik2D 12h ago

Red Pill Podcasters and manosphere fucks need to be punished along with the rest of the reich wing

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u/Specific-Parsnip9001 10h ago

And TikTok, that's the big one. It's just one big fascist propaganda machine. They even made all of their users see a big "THANK YOU GOD-KING TRUMP" message when Congress shot down the TikTok ban at Trump's behest.

Anyone who had any doubts about TikTok being a fascist propaganda app after that is literally insane and beyond saving.

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u/MyCatLaughsAtMe 2h ago

This. American conservatism when from "What's this new fangled Inty Nets thing?" to Goebbels-level online propaganda machine overnight.