The Right Has a Young White Male Problem

Last year, an article by Jacob Savage went viral in Combat magazine and it was about how diversity, equity and inclusion or affirmative action policies fell hardest on millennials and if I may add, Jen said, because it was the boomers and GeneXsers who implemented them and their positions in institutions like media and academia and politics whenever in question. But when it was implemented, it cut off an entire generation from entering those institutions and following in their elders footsteps and talent being cultivated, young men being mentored, having a place in society, in politics, in culture. And the key quotes that stood out to me were in the introduction where Savage wrote, "As the Trump administration takes a chainsaw to the diversity, equity and inclusion apparatus, as a tendency to portray DEI as a series of well-meaning, but ineffectual HR modules. This may be how Boomer and GeneXx white men experienced DEI. But for white male millennials, DEI wasn't a gentle rebalancing, it was a profound shift in how power and prestige were distributed, yet practically none of the thousands of articles and think pieces about diversity have considered the issue by cohort. This isn't a story about all white men, it's a story about white male millennials in professional America, about those who stayed and who mostly stayed quiet. The same identity a decade apart meant entirely different professional fates. If you were 14 2014, born in 1974, beginning your career in the late 90s, you were already established. If you were 30 in 2014, you hit the wall, because the mandates to diversify didn't fall on older white men, who in many cases still wield enormous power, they landed on us. And the exact same thing is happening on the British right for Zoomers. Because for some reason, and I think this might be a source of intergenerational tension, and therefore a need for a bit of bilateral charity and dialogue, but for some reason there has been a near-total failure, for the institutional right, the established right, print and politics, in Britain to cultivate the wealth of young talent that is just lying on the table. I know lots of the young right wingers in Britain. I, regardless of my station, I've been banned from every major political party, every major publication, sometimes the physical premises of these outlets, for what I think is saying too much too soon. Now that might well be a personality defect of mine, something which some of my elders that are still in these institutions and have given me a fair hearing, have said is probably the case. I'll take their advice on board. But not talking about myself, just being in these circles, I know these people right. Lots of them are keeping their heads down and staying quiet, because they feel like they're pure wetting on the head of a pin to not be denounced and fired by their own bosses. I know a number of people, who for example have been working behind the scenes in political parties or policy institutions over the last year, and whose social media accounts have been attacked by hope not hate, a state-funded communist organisation, and who are still getting fired by their elders, rather than taking to one side and told, "Hey, you might want to act more prudently, this is the pressure we're under, this is the messaging system strategy that we're going for. Please don't jeopardize that. You know, this is just a word of caution, but we still have your back. Instead, they are cut loose." And they are expected to go and find a job elsewhere. Or, there are plenty of people who do keep their heads down, keep their mouths shut, and are running in place, because the institutions on the right have not made it possible to be a professional right-winger in Britain, in the same way that there is a patronage network and extensive one, in America, in Washington, the allow young people to get a start in politics and ascend the ladder to become the inheritors of the political project. And this isn't talking in terms of entitlement here. This is talking in terms of, to the older generation, who do gay keep these institutions. If you want your political project to be intergenerational, if you want to secure a future for your country and your family, then who do you expect to be the custodians of that vision? If you don't train them up, if you don't have patience with them, if you don't afford them opportunities, if you don't allow them to earn a living, being inculcated, gaining experience, learning the talking points, following your footsteps. The problem with the right in Britain at the moment is that it cannot answer the following question. What positive vision and place in society is there for white men? Because both the left and the establishment right can answer that for women and minorities. In many respects, they share the same vision there. But the best that the left has to offer for white men is, you are the villains of history, we are going to take the proceeds generated by you and your ancestors and distribute them to our oppressed identity client groups. And if you go extinct in the process, well, it means that there's going to be no oppression of those oppressed groups. So we kind of want to happen anyway. And on the right, it is yes, the left hate you. They hate straight white men because they are straight white men. But if you are conscious of their hatred, of your race, your sex, your identity, then you are indistinguishable from the work left because we are liberal individuals. And if you want to do something about it other than just pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, focusing on generating your own income, despite being legally and culturally discriminated against in institutions of both the left and right, if you complain about having an uphill struggle that doesn't need to be this severe, then we will say you were indulging in the politics of victimhood as if you are on the work left. There is an unwillingness to recognize the legitimate grievances of young white men on the side that is meant to be taking their side. Too often the right wants to beat the left on their own terms. And so wanting to not be seen as racist by the left, wanting to induct a sizable portion of non-native, non-white young people into the conservative vision, wanting to have right-wing opinions seem high status among women and therefore have attractive, well-spoken, well-educated, effective female spokespeople act as role models to other young women who otherwise are following the runaway, aggressive preference cascade of suicidal empathy, climate, cultism and anti-natalism embodied by the Green Party. There is a desire to put women and minority spokespeople at the front of the queue so that you can have this inclusive, attractive vision of conservatism to women and minorities while also not being called racist by the left. But that means that white men have no natural constituency. They have no home. They have no part in the political project that they can play and neither side is vying to make use of their talents. And they are the cohort that are most dedicated to defending and reconstituting their home and their patronage. And it seems imprudent to me to cut off an entire generation of young white men, not just in terms of the talent they can bring to the table, but because then your political project becomes obsolete within a generation. And this generation do have very different political priors to their elders because we were born into and brought up in completely different social, economic and cultural circumstances. They have shaped our priorities and rather than a dialogue between generations, there has been a recoiling from when those young people voiced their grievances. And it's because not only of the content of those grievances, but the way in which they are voiced, usually unfiltered on social media in a way that the older generation who are used to the old new cycle of politics, of print and the BBC and radio interviews in a carefully curated environment, don't understand and don't trust, but they offend their older sensibilities and so rather than have a conversation with them, they instead cut them loose, cancel them, cast them out to the darkness, because either they find them to be morally repugnant because they don't try to understand them, or because they might privately agree with some of the things they say, but out of risk aversion to protect their carefully curated political media project to carry them in vows over the line of the next election, they think these young guys are way too rank punctious, they're way too online, we can't control their messaging output and so they're too dangerous to associate ourselves with them and so will return to them in a few years when they've calmed down a bit. But the problem is between now and then that energy is not dissipating, they're no less eager or desperate, frankly, to play a part in saving their nation and what you get is they either double down on their ideas and so see you as insufficiently taking their side and so actually see the establishment right as the enemy and so spend all their time attacking the establishment right for not allowing them in on the project or they get burned out and quit and so you just lose that talent. Now if every institution has that mentality, if every institution either has that risk aversion because they see a given political party or a media outlet as this precious Ming vows that they just have to carry to the finish line and then everyone can look at it and so we can't have anyone tripping us up along the way. If every institution thinks like that or worse, if every institution shares the political priors of the left and so sees straight white men as being a disadvantage compared to gay, female or non-white spoke people, if every institution has that risk of us mentality then they can't get work anywhere and that means that neither side has a role for young white men. If non-political institutions gay keep against them and then political institutions on the left gay keep against them and so they seek the redress of their grievances by the right and the right says well it's actually more advantageous when debating the left to not have a straight white man make the arguments and also if you are a straight white man and you recognize that you are being legally and culturally discriminated against by the state, by the political left and you say I as a straight white man have a grievance here as an identifiable group well then we're going to accuse you of playing group identity politics and victim politics and so you're no different from the work left and so we're going to call you work right. So the problem is the British right as it stands doesn't allow young people to be outspoken it will cut them loose at the first sign of controversy out of either risk a version or because they share political philosophical priors with their enemies with the identitarian work left and so either promote women or minority spokespeople to make their arguments for them or if young white men say I have an identity as a young white or English man it seems to be in conflict with other identities who hate me and fired the first shot in the culture war and legally I am disadvantaged in my own country and I would like a redress of my grievances along those lines then the institutions will treat them as if they are the true enemy because unlike the progressive left who are just mistaken in their means of enacting a egalitarian utopia these young white men reject the premise that we can have a liberal colorblind utopia unlike the left who are just going about it the wrong way so then young white men become the far right and the real enemy and this was the attitude late last year after Nick Fuentes was interviewed by Tucker Carlson when during an event discussing the interview and whether or not Mago will be ripped apart by the grippers in the unheard club Baroness Claire Fox who was part of the Brexit party was part of living Marxism health co-found spiked runs battle by the so an influential figure on the establishment disaffected liberal and British right said that she thinks there are grippers or ethno nationalists everywhere under 30 and that the job of those already in right wing institutions is to gatekeep against these young radicals to push back on them to not give them jobs and to say their politics are not welcome in these institutions is slightly different here it's much smaller but it's there's a rise of a very nasty pseudo intellectual ethno nationalism that is very similar and I've been following the Nick Fuentes thing for a few years and I work with a lot of young people anyway that's that bit question where do you see it here I see it all over the place I mean when you work with kind of you know 18 to 30 years which is why I work a few years ago I started to spot these people and I thought god are you the hell are they right and it's difficult because we've all been called Nazis and racist promiscuously used at the drop of a hat so then there's a difficulty of even discussing it because he starts they're racist people go we're all racist now they go are they a bit far right they go we're all far right now and I understand but it's makes a difference anyway my question the generational question because it does seem to me that a lot of the reason for the complacency in this country and even in America is that older people feel like you know a bit like this is a reflection of the left's progressives think oh we're all dinosaurs and old and these are the young kids on the block right so maybe we can you know regenerate ourselves and rejuvenate ourselves by hanging out with these young people heritage thinks oh you know young people are not going to take any notice of us but well maybe we'll have a few of the new kids in and I do think that's exactly what's happened on the you know all the institutions in society where the old CEOs and so on go oh it's all the young people in the organization and they take over so I think that we're seeing it a bit here I assume that's what's happening in America why the older people haven't got the courage to call them out because they don't want to alienate themselves is that fair I'm not saying all young people of course but you know so the reason Fox is wrong here is because none of the labels she is using accurately describes the people she's talking about and she's talking about me and some friends of mine I don't think any of us would use the term gripper I don't think any of us would use the term ethno nationalist I think what she's describing is a cohort of young people who place a lot more emphasis on identity ethnicity nationality than she as a liberal and former trotskiest is comfortable with now you don't have to listen to me to understand this groupish mentality because man could win who is a sensible and respected academic and a member of reform UK currently running as an MP has put it in terms that might be more palatable to you than me a rambunctious summa cancel from everywhere and good when explained in this policy exchange report titled the future of the right reflecting a wider trend that is visible in most if not all western states the realignment that is reshaping British politics today is one that in broad terms has seen the cultural access in politics national belonging versus universal liberalism become just as important if not more so as the economic access markets versus the state clearly this is not to say that debates about economic security no longer matter after all Britain remains locked in the sharpest cost of living crisis since the second world war with stagnant growth low productivity and very high levels of debt rather it is to say that actual or perceived concerns about belonging culture and identity sharpened by mass migration broken borders and the rise of islamism have become a much more important lens through which voters interpret and navigate politics and please understand that is the only lens that people under 13 know because we couldn't take as given that the demographics of our country would be stable that everyone around us basically thought the same thing behaved in the same way and so we were all engaged in the shared political project of making Britain a better place and so all we needed to talk about is energy and economics tax policies pot holes etc. Now we think a lot more existentially because other groups be it the work left or anti-white minorities think in zero some games and we feel that we're on the losing end of that and we don't feel that any of the establishment that's meant to be on our side is taking our side and anytime we voice our complaints about being put in this zero some game by the political decisions made before we were born we are then cancelled from these institutions we don't have a place in them and all you have to do is look at these institutions and see there is not an embarrassment of riches when it comes to young talent that are in these institutions there are a few exceptions and again I know them and others have been barred from all of these institutions but would otherwise be absolute assets to this political project for example reform UK wants to win the young male vote might your Farage has spoken about how his tiktok is doing astounding numbers but he's not winning over young men in the same way that young women are being persuaded to join the green party even though it is provably against their own personal interests they put it risk play immigrant sex offenders they are told they don't need families because the world is ending all of these things are psychologically and civilisationally harmful and yet young women are persuaded by them so why aren't young men being persuaded in similar numbers by reform where are their young spokespeople where are their young people that are speaking to them in the same terms as young influencers spoke to members of the Magga coalition in the same way that Charlie Kirk was able to organise young people and university campuses and through social media to go and vote for Donald Trump and there were some young people in the last year that said I am supporting reform I vote reform and most if not all of them have been cartless because of a risk aversion to how they express themselves in social media and because of this distinction in the way that they see politics because older people are much more focused on economics and are much more individualistic and liberal and younger people have grown up in an environment where the culture and demographic makeup of the country was fractured before they were born and the natural tribalism of other groups be it Muslim sectarian voters or just the organic and yes regrettable but observable racial segregation in their classrooms or their lunchrooms at school this has made it so that they think more groupishly than their elders this is something that my friend Carl Benjamin discussed with Peter McCormack in the aftermath of the Nick Fuentes peers Morgan debate and he asked the question again what is the positive place for young white men and if the right cannot provide one then it will find itself in a constant struggle with those young white men who want to be a part of a political project that helps save their nation for themselves and their children who are going to be alive quite a lot longer than the older people gatekeeping them out of institutions as Claire Fox recommends there and have to deal with the consequences of the problems that you aren't willing to confront because they offend your liberal sensibilities namely demographics cultural change mass migration and the fact that groups that have been brought into our society don't seem to like white people very much the racial resentment goes one way but recognizing that racial resentment and the fact that it's codified into law it was about to be codified into sentencing guidance last year if you recognize that there is an anti white anti male animus emanating from our institutions from our law from our culture from the people that have been brought into our country through immigration policy just noticing the identity conflict gets you called work right gets you called a gripper gets you called an ethno nationalist and what that means is I can put all of these young men into a box that I can morally condemn and therefore not have to listen to and don't have to address their concerns and I'm sorry that not only takes lots of talent off the table for the British right that they need but it's also just not right it's not right that you shouldn't provide a positive vision to young men who want one who just want to do the right thing who want to help their country who want to have a family who want to own a home who want to raise their children in a land that belongs to them the left is promising to deprive them of their country with the avatar of this resentful revolutionary being Bob Villanick Glastonbury last year whereas the right doesn't want to speak in those terms because it doesn't want to offend the left and get called names by them so young white men who are very talented and very eager to help have no role in no representation and this was Dave Green's observation having read the Jacob Savage article like recommend people go and read the substag but the part of Dave's analysis that stood out to me is how young men are shut out of these institutions just in the way they communicate and what they want to talk about and so this is why I think they found themselves on the cleaving end of the scythe within the right he says for instance for many white men the natural response to being invited to the conversation about identity or oppression or equality any of these politically charged left coded topics is to attempt an actual conversation why not let your objections be known show the opposition up with facts and logic naturally if you liked debate shouldn't it be easy to be an outspoken dissenter against the prevailing diversity orthodoxy in theory this might work but the manager running the conversation at your college or workplace or media or political institution was in possession of a trump card that could render all objections moot a card that simply read stop whining in masculine discourse spaces whining is an objective description of a way of voicing grievances that is non conducive to procuring solutions however the word whining has an altogether different definition in female spaces and Dave doesn't strictly mean men and women he means a way of conducting conversations that focuses on the facts of the matter and solving problems versus a way of conducting conversations that keeps the peace and doesn't offend people that is concerned principally about external perceptions rather than about being straightforward and factual Dave says in these spaces concerns are not evaluated for their solution orientedness instead objections are considered legitimate or illegitimate to the extent that the person making those objections is considered legitimate or illegitimate it's a status game and its status based on the compliance to the moral priors of the person assessing whether or not you are legitimate or illegitimate and so it breaks down to the following question does the person talking about their problems have high status are their problems considered high status problems could we share in that high status by commiserating with them if the answer is yes then the problem is significant and warrants consideration by everyone if the answer is no then the problem is just whining no one cares about your low status problems and you were a bad person for imposing some emotional labor on everyone else in the group so the effect of calling young right wing white men woke right is akin to saying you are whining stop it we aren't going to listen to you we're going to call you this name that allows us to not listen to you because according to our individualistic liberal moral priors that we share with the left because we just think the left are hypocritical not evil then you are being insufficiently individualistic and liberal you are actually whining because you are saying I am being discriminated against as a white man for my identity group and so we don't think that your concerns warrant hearing because they are low status according to our moral framework that says individualistic liberalism and meritocracy are the high status opinions that we want to enforce and so this is how young people who are concerned about the groupishness of society who do think in terms of ethnicity and ancestry and identity and recognize these are important things for solidarity and loyalty and building a nation in which people feel that they belong you can see how those would then be low status opinions according to the more liberal individualistic older people who gatekeep these institutions like playfox who I'm sorry but took the demographics that they grew up with for granted whereas we have never known that world and we aren't shown any charity or consideration when we voice our concerns about that issue because not only is the issue icky to those liberal moral sensibilities but also there is a risk of version to being seen to be associated with those concerns because you'll be called mean names by the left and so rather than being taken to one side and said hey why are you concerned about this how can we help you frame these arguments how can we help mentor you so you can build up a power base in this institution and participate in this political project instead not wanting to be called mean names by the left those people are cut loose and so you cut all of your talent under you loose to not be called mean names by your enemy the best example of this clash was at the now and England conference last year and as Laurie Wastor wrote in his piece for the spectator the knob of the issue is this the largely generational divide that is becoming increasingly visible on the British right there are many who prefer to ignore ethnicity ancestry and demographics on the grounds at such topics are both immaterial and icky there are some who insist against all the available evidence that multiculturalism has been a success think phrase and else in in 2024 saying that Britain is an integration miracle accidentally kick starting the global conversation about the grooming gangs because that is such a tone deaf and out of touch comment that people were very offended by the implication that there is nothing wrong with the policies that he has supported on the other hand there are those who are unapologetic about believing that in the English or an ethnic group that England is our home and the more diverse our society becomes the less happy it will be the dividing line on demographics among the old and the young is there is an inbuilt optimism among the old that everyone can just integrate or assimilate with sufficiently muscular cultural showvinism and an enforcement of immigration law to just remove illegals whereas among the young who have grown up in this groupish ethnocultural mosaic environment we are very pessimistic about it and if things have been viewed in groupish terms by non-political institutions by the political left but also implicitly by the political right because they do want women or minority spokespeople we then go okay recognizing that things are now governed according to identity groups what is the role of native straight white men in not just broader society but our own political movement that's meant to be advocating for our nation and our interests and we are not given one instead we are treated as a risk and a liability and that is why there is not an abundance of young white men involved in these institutions despite they're being no shortage of talent that's why there are a few writers like Laurie who is excellent over at the spectators from Dady Skeptic but most like Laurie have found themselves on the sharp end of their elders intolerance for their interest in immigration and identity for their aptitude for social media for their willingness to communicate authentically unfiltered and in rapid fashion in the way that Twitter incentivises rather than the 24 hour media cycle of laundering your opinion through carefully curated statements to the times or reciting your sound bites in a 5 to 10 minute interview on the BBC or GB news does it is treated as a liability rather than an asset and it should be regarded an asset because that is where the majority of the youth are on social media now and so you need to meet them on their terms speaking their language and the only people that do speak their language are those young people but they are cast aside because they are seen as too risky they are seen as stepping on the toes of taboos that their elders would rather not address and I'm sorry I think not only is that conversation going to have to be had at one point or another because you can't ignore an aspect of reality especially when lots of people are concerned about it but otherwise it's going to be had in such a way that you don't like the solution to this as Dave says is in the wake of Jacob Savage's article as well as numerous other permission pieces exposing the mainstream's persistent mandacity it is clear to most well-meaning people there remains only one solution building in parallel reform is not coming the institutions that exist are already staffed by our enemies who have no incentive to change there is no groundwork for a populous revolution moreover the possibility of top down regime change remains entirely beyond our control the only way out is through accordingly the only solution is to build what we need apart from the surrounding corruption creating new things where necessary and to accomplish this young and older men need to work together is it time to tribe up as many young guys say online well as Dave points out here yes there is a necessity to build in parallel if you aren't allowed in the institutions there's a couple of problems with this in Britain the political pond is much shallower there's a lot less money to go around and so a lot of the investment is concentrated in core institutions in recognizable media publications like the spectator unheard like the telegraph or Jimmy News like the alliance for responsible citizenship reform perhaps the conservative party though they seem determined on being rendered electorally obsolete and so if the funds and the attention are concentrated in these institutions and there aren't many spare pennies to go around then it's very difficult to actually build an institution on your own lots of young people are looking at that establishment right and thinking this is my only route into politics to to affect change in the country that I care about and that establishment is so risk of us despite having some good people inside it that it sees young people as a liability for example at the art conference I happen to notice that the narrative is about building a better story for the next generation okay where is that next generation they're not on stage you're not in dialogue with them they might be invited along but some of them had to pay exorbitant amounts of money to wander around a convention centre and they weren't included in the conversation and just to put it out there religion specifically Christianity is becoming a lot more important among young right wingers and this is encouraged on stage ad hoc by especially Dr Jordan Peterson but also it's founder and funder Paul Marshall who is an evangelical Christian but there seems to be this paradox because then if young people do take up their cross and become Christians then they're also meant to compartmentalize that away from their politics because they're told well in the words of Alice to Campbell under Blair we don't really do God in this country you can't have Christianity your deeply held metaphysical moral convictions about good and evil the nature of the universe what is right and wrong you can't have that inform your politics on issues like abortion or surrogacy on euthanasia or pornography you can't do any of those things because that is insufficiently socially liberal for our broad coalition so there needs to be a dialogue at the very least between young people who do have a different set of political priorities about immigration and identity ancestry and nation but also Christianity there does need to be this dialogue between young and old people and older people need to show them some charity they need to be forgiving they need to understand that we do discourse in a different way to the way that they did because we are digital natives we grew up on social media and that can actually be an asset to your political project if you bring it in house and defer some expertise to these young people but also in kind and this is something that Dave Green observes in his essay and so this is an olive branch from me to some of the older people perhaps on behalf of my cohort perhaps I'm too beyond the pale and I'm going to be banned from everything forever find that might be my role we understand but Dave points out paradoxically a necessary step to thriving up working collectively involves cultivating many of the disciplined and moralistic habits most young people consider boomer and that's true I mean lots of young people don't do volunteering whereas lots of older people are the ones keeping the rotary clubs or the church choirs or the civic associations going and those are all noble things I think a lot of that time potential to be volunteers has been diminished by the fact that things are very very expensive for young people nowadays and so we can't really justify time that isn't spent earning money compared to time invested in our local community and the ethnic and cultural heterogeneity of our local community makes it harder to get to know our neighbors but in order for us to cultivate those habits we have to be mentored by the people that have those habits and so there needs to be a relationship with reciprocity between the older establishment and the up and coming young right wingers I hope you want to understand why we think what we think why we are so energized and desperate to be involved in fixing the country why we say the things that we say why we're concerned about the things we're concerned about at the moment all we're getting is shunning and shaming and name calling and I'll be honest I don't do this very often it's been very discouraging you know my personal cancellation hasn't exactly been fun over the last year it's been pretty hard to pay a mortgage and start a family as I'm facing being blacklisted from everywhere and I know that lots of other people are in the same position and are wasting their potential staying quiet in academia because they don't think that if they get outed and cancelled that anyone will have their back or they aren't being allowed into the institutions where their talents could be best put to use so what I'm hoping this video does is reach the ears of people that are concerned about leaving a legacy are concerned about cultivating young talent are thinking about the line of succession for their political project and also do actually care about us because it's difficult and you can feel despondent at times and feel that no matter how hard you try or how much you even try to anticipate the expectations or reaction to the things you say you can never quite get it right and so your career is always on a knife edge when you're just trying to do the right thing and help fix your country and so what I what I hope this video does is reiterate that the right has a real young white male talent problem and that you do need to lower the drawbridge somewhat enter into dialogue with us boss stir some young talent and rather than just cast people out the first transgression take them aside have a conversation with them try and understand why they think what they think and what they are doing and don't just sack them on the spot and expect them to disappear because your enemies disapprove of what they say and do otherwise if you don't have young people as part of your institutions who are you saving the country for