Young Men and Online Radicalization: Dissecting Internet Subcultures with Lee Fang, Katherine Dee, and Evan Barker
Should there be a moral panic about young people being radicalized online? As much of the media struggles to understand and describe Gen Z internet culture in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, journalist and culture writer Katherine Dee discusses the dark internet subcultures influencing young people and what can be done about them. Plus: former Democratic operative Evan Barker discusses how Democrats alienate young men, and what Democrats can learn from Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA. Lee Fang guest hosts. --------------------------------- Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET. Become part of our Locals community Follow System Update: Twitter Instagram TikTok Facebook
Charlie Kirk was a towering figure among conservatives, but in particular for many young men.
Kirk built a national following through the organization that he co-founded, Turning Point USA.
Turning Point has become an incredible institution on the conservative right.
The group now has chapters at over 850 college campuses.
It has many paid organizers who are expected to make at least 1,500 student contacts per semester.
The group boasts a budget, an annual budget of over 80 million dollars per year.
The money is spent to train students in debate and social media and tactics for electioneering to help the Republican Party and various conservative causes.
And Kirk realized early on that college campuses were fertile ground for rebuilding the conservative movement.
His debate format was a bit formulaic at times, often using quips and canned responses to counter liberal opponents.
But he was nonviolent.
He was engaging.
He inspired countless young people with his ability to create viral moments, and in doing so, he became the de facto youth leader of the MAGA movement, a pivotal institution for Donald Trump's coalition.
In 2024, young men swung to the Republican Party by 30%, one of the biggest demographic earthquakes in modern electoral history.
It's safe to say that Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA played a big role in this incredible shift.
Young men, it turns out, have been exhausted by the liberal culture wars, which have all too often demonized men as oppressors, as sexual predators, and as the cause of many problems in society.
Yet, young men, the statistics show, are not doing well.
Recent data shows that young men are becoming more addicted to drugs and alcohol, including high potency pot, as well as addicted to sports betting and other forms of gambling.
Compulsive habits around video games and pornography are overwhelmingly reported among young men.
They're increasingly dropping out of college, failing to hold a job, and becoming more and more lonely.
Increasing numbers of young men report few, if any close friends or romantic partners.
Kirk reflected on this crisis.
He repeatedly discussed the crisis among young men, which showed his political acumen and his ability to build bridges among young people.
Young men, said Kirk, are quote, checking out.
They're the lost boys of the West.
They're checking out largely because the entire society has become hostile to them.
They've been told that they were toxically masculine.
Kirk encouraged young men to find purpose in work, family, and the church.
He encouraged them to run for office or to help with local political races like school board or local assembly.
He told them repeatedly to find a quote mission grounding their lives and responsibility and meaning in something bigger.
That brings us to Kirk's alleged killer, Tyler Robinson.
There's much we do not know about this young man.
But what we do know is that his profile and the profile of so many other young people drawn into a life of violence is that it fits this pattern of young men lost in the world of internet gaming and nihilism.
Tyler Tyler's gun casings reference meme and video message board video game message board culture.
Among many Gen Z and Gen Alpha young men, it seems to be they seem to embrace what's been known as a black pill mindset.
That is to say, that the path for finding a job, finding an apartment, or buying a home, or even getting into a relationship seems impossible for them.
The idea is to maybe get rich at any cost or get famous at any costs.
They use irony and crude memes to mask the deep anxiety that they feel.
They lack any real hope for a positive future.
They're admired in memes and internet symbols and a jokey culture fed to them by social media algorithms, and they know that in this virtual world, the only way to stand out is through increasingly vulgar and violent images and acts.
There is a deep and tragic irony in that Kirk's suspected killer is the exact type of young man that Kirk hoped to help.
I want to dedicate this system update episode to this crisis among young men and this internet culture that kind of pervades uh so much of society.
Uh to dive deeper into this, uh, we have Catherine D, a journalist who specializes in reporting on internet culture.
And later we have Evan Barker, a former democratic operative who has since left the party.
We'll talk to her about the crisis among young men and if progressives realize the problems that we were facing in society.
Stay tuned.
I want to welcome our next guest, Katherine D. Uh, Catherine is a culture writer and journalist.
She publishes a substack called Default Friend, where she chronicles internet subcultures and other digital trends.
Catherine, so thank you for joining System Update.
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Well, we don't know the true motives or political ideology of the alleged Charlie Cook Kirk shooter.
The suspect Tyler Robinson left behind shell casings with references to gaming and meme culture, some of it apparently left-wing, but it's not abundantly clear.
Uh, he also seemed to mock anyone, even attempting to scrutinize his beliefs on one shell casing.
He wrote, if you read this uh you are gay, LMAO.
Um I wanted to ask you a little bit about this.
You know, this isn't this is certainly the most high profile shooter or mass shooter who has left behind a digital trail or or some type of trail referencing meme culture, kind of video gaming culture.
Um what do you think about the the media's reaction in in the wake of this?
Has it been fairly covered?
Um, some people it's it's been the the coverage hasn't been uh evenly distributed.
Um I think some people have been trying their best.
Um it's a lot of pressure on journalists, as as you know, to scramble in um you know a short period of time to try to make sense of a very emotionally charged situation.
Um, you know, I think a lot of people took this, even if they weren't politically aligned with Charlie Kirk, they took it very personally because you know, it an editor friend of mine said that it could have been it could have been anyone, and in a way, he's he's right.
Like I think a lot of journalists see themselves in Charlie, whether or not they were political activists.
So there's something like uniquely disturbing about it uh for that reason.
Um it's hard.
It's it's hard to make sense.
It's hard to, it's it's it's hard to figure out what's going on.
Um the other side of it is that no, I think some people have uh been very unfair.
Um I think uh there've been there's a bit a lot of like blame game, there's been a lot of engagement baiting.
Uh, there's a lot of people have made things up.
Um certainly we are seeing this a lot with um some people on the left.
I don't think uh the reaction to that necessarily is but completely fair.
I mean, I think some some people have were certainly celebrating his death, which is totally inappropriate and totally appalling and making up quotes.
Some people I think are getting in trouble for merely uh, you know pushing back against uh the idea that Charlie Kirk was a moderate or you know, something like this.
But um, yeah, it's been it's been a mess.
You know, uh the short version is it's been very chaotic, and there's been both good and bad coverage.
You know, as journalists, as just observers, uh, I think there is a very genuine attempt to connect any phenomenon or crisis with moments in the past, especially the recent past.
Um there's kind of a look at this wave of political violence that we're experiencing now in an effort to connect it to the wave of political violence we had in the late 60s and early 70s.
Um there's a lot of differences too, right?
Um maybe it's a it's a shoehorning of politics.
There's a kind of um desire to fit everything into a neat ideological narrative.
And at times, some of these shooters appear um again, we we don't know Robinson's full motives or ideology, but he does seem to fit into a trend that is very unlike the past, where there are people who um associate with online subcultures that see politics as kind of an extension of video games, that it's not connected to public policy.
You know, he's not not fighting for a tax hike or a change in the healthcare system or toggling with our foreign policy.
It's it's more that um, you know, there's uh an attempt to kind of own or humiliate political opponents on chat rooms or in mass live massive online video games, and uh it it's almost it it's almost detached from what we would would traditionally call politics.
I I think that's true.
Um I will push back a little bit that it's totally new.
I think it's what's what is new is the scale.
Um it's become a little bit more common for people to have uh this this outlook.
Um, but you know, I watched a documentary, a you know, sort of controversial documentary recently um about violence in the United States, and it was from the early 80s, and the the documentary is basically like um putting together news clips and quotes from um spree shooters, mass murderers, uh mass shooters.
And one of them said, I wanted to hurt society where it would hurt them the most by taking their future members.
And that that like really that's that's been haunting me since I watched it.
Because I was thinking like that's that level of rage.
I mean, you you we that's you know, that's eternal.
You see that throughout history.
What's different is the scale.
Um you also see you know, th throughout history of American violence, um, but now more often, this um desire to be perceived by an audience, this fear that you um won't make a difference, that there is no future, um, something that mass shooters um and really murderers of all kinds, um, you know, you see you see this quote again and again is I want it to be remembered.
I want it to be important.
Um, and this desire can be, you know, positive or negative.
That in the positive sense, you have people who want to make a dent in the universe by I uh, you know, um scientific inquiry or creating new tech or whatever, and then there's this this darker expression of that need to be remembered and um make your life worth something, um, which unfortunately is through pain through through hurting society.
Yeah.
And and you write you wrote on your substack recently uh quoting the forum Kiwi Farms.
And could you just describe what what Kiwi Farms is?
But they they mention um something called Zoomer sadism.
Could you explain this concept?
Yeah, um so Zoomer sadism is this idea um that so Kiwi Farms is a gossip website, it's it's pretty it's pretty controversial.
Some people think it should be um off the web entirely.
Um, but this idea of Zoomer sadism is that that people become like husks because they're online so much that they become so desensitized, um that like they like they'll post gore and not really understand the gravity of it.
Um they you know, sometimes this extends into uh Discord servers where where people are posting all sorts of abuse material.
Um you know, another thing that um is is very common is um purposely trying to traumatize younger people in online communities um sort of as a joke uh by like early porn exposure um or sending them again like very violent videos.
Um and there is this atmosphere that that permeates the web of just nothing matters.
The the sense of nothing matters, um, and it's kind of memefied and it's seems to permeate both what we would consider the the left or right, it's this kind of this broad generalization that uh that young people, just especially young men have adopted.
How much do you think the COVID lockdowns, the school closures and the social isolation is is fueling this.
I think that was a huge impact because not only did it put people, you know, it isolated people at this critical period.
Um and for so long, it also killed a lot of in-person subcultures, in-person um, you know, meetups.
Like anyone who is part of any sort of subculture or even hobby, they know that post-COVID, like people just aren't meeting up as much anymore.
Um, and you know, even long after uh the regulations have disappeared, it's just that people got used to being alone and they want to be alone.
Um, and they're not there the the must the socializing muscle has been weakened.
This seems like something that's not really talked about in a proactive way among politicians.
There's this kind of effort to say, hey, we need to we need the FBI or law enforcement to crack down on potential online terrorism.
Um, but the kind of route that you're discussing that the kind of fuels this that young people aren't socializing in person anymore.
They aren't finding real life connection.
How how do you address this?
Um I mean it's difficult because the the rot is is so deep.
And it's also difficult because you know, at the same time, I don't like I don't want to vilify the internet completely and say, like, oh, it's you know, it's because you know, it's because everyone has a smartphone, it's because of social media.
I think there are many different things going on.
Um, you know, another thing that I don't think is looked at enough, like in the case of school shootings is our schools aren't pleasant places to be.
That doesn't justify murder by any stretch of the imagination, but it's another ingredient to uh like this this tinder box.
It's like you're socially isolated.
Um in some cases it might be as extreme as um you know, predator groups grooming you.
There have been six school shootings um in the in the last, I think, you know, two or three years that have been connected to um uh predator groups online, so in particular 764, um, you know, which people who have much stronger stomachs than I do have done incredible research on.
Um, one is my friend BX.
Uh you can find her at BX rights.com.
Um, but so there's there's that.
There is um there's the schools are unpleasant, there's the way we're socializing, uh, there's the way we're parenting.
There's so many things that are that are going on.
Um, and it seems impossible to like what what is the positive vision?
Where do you start um and where do you start without removing people's rights?
Like I think um, you know, John Height is is trying, right?
He's just let's let's get rid of the smartphones.
But that doesn't feel quite right either.
Um is age verification on social media the the right response.
I don't think so.
But then I don't have a better answer either.
Yeah, it's tough.
I mean, a lot of these ideas conflict with basic American principles around individual agency and individual liberty.
But the science um seems strongly persuasive that you know, hardcore pornography, uh social media, violent video games at very young ages, um, you know, it can lead to to negative social effects.
Uh I mean, absolutely.
And I've spoken to a lot, so I I do these ethnographic interviews of people about how they use the internet.
Um and we start at when was the first time you got online, and then they walk me through.
Um, and you know, that's how I learn about different subcultures and how I, you know, because everyone gets stuck in their filter bubbles.
So how I make sure that I'm I'm seeing as uh wide a picture as possible.
Um, and I I will say that um it's not that you know perfectly normal children who are from loving households get sucked down the rabbit hole and uh corrupted and you know they're taken a they're taken away by the internet and everything's ruined.
There's shades of that happen, right?
Like people see things they wish they hadn't that happened to me, I'm sure that happened to you.
Um, but the real extreme stories usually is it starts with um there's adverse events in the home.
Um maybe they're struggling with money, maybe there's an abusive parent, maybe it's both.
Um and that's really that that's and then when the internet's introduced, um, then it gets worse.
So it's like, you know, we want to blame the internet completely.
Um, but at the same time, it certainly doesn't help um people in situations where where things are are are really bad.
Yeah, that's right.
And you know, I I you know this this aspect of it is not, you know, I haven't seen the same level of um media scrutiny, but you know, I was also struck by a Wall Street Journal story about the rise in carjackings in Washington, DC.
And they spoke to community uh nonviolent, you know, interveners, community activists who described the differences with um a lot of black and brown working class youth in the city.
They noted that in the 80s and 90s, young people were being recruited by gangs to engage in carjackings.
Um it was kind of an indoctrination or an induction uh effort into into the organized crime.
Uh now in the last few years, you have young kids from the same communities who are stealing cars and in many cases not member of gangs, not even selling the gangs, they're simply recording themselves on TikTok and other social media for the lulls for kind of like the their uh for their participation in another kind of internet subculture that glorifies certain types of violence.
And you just have to wonder how much um of the overall kind of crimes crime spike we've seen over the last five years uh perpetrated by young people were doing this to uh participate in in a in an online subculture that uh that certain that that glorifies certain certain types of violence and where they did they lacked structure at home.
Yeah, I mean, I I definitely think that's part of it.
Um it's it's interesting that you you bring up gangs.
I think like it must I think it was Jesse Single who um today, and just in a tw in a tweet thread, but I thought it was very insightful, um, compared um certain like subcultural memberships to gangs, you know, where you you sort of feel a sense of obligation to these uh different groups that you're part of online.
And you see it on um sort of a surface level way, like a a lot of journalists experience this, like they end up in certain ideological currents and it helps their career a little bit.
Um and then it's like they're in the group chats, and people are like, well, no, you need to have this take or that take, and it can get uh really emotionally fraught, but you also see that in a more um sinister way too, um, with people feeling like they need to view certain content or uh commit certain crimes,
even um because of their membership to certain to certain groups you you also mentioned in a recent Substack post, just reminding people of the of the relatively recent development that the FBI has created this new category of kind of nihilist extremists.
Could you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, so this is a new type of violence.
Um it's it refers to uh these predator groups like uh 764 and Order of Nine Angles.
Um and they they sound like a little bit about what what what are those?
Sure, sure.
So they these are the these decentralized groups, right?
So it's it's not like there's one leader that everyone's reporting to.
Um it's these like little cells um that enter um subcultures of kids who are already vulnerable.
So it's like self-harm communities, eating disorder communities, the true crime community, which um I've written about at length.
Um, and that's that's sort of more my specialty.
And they have been linked to these, I mean, terrible um, you know, these terrible crimes, not just school shootings, which I, you know, talked about a little earlier, but also suicides, um, getting the uh, you know, getting people to live stream uh self-harm, hurting animals.
There was um a case in Florida several months ago uh where a young girl had been targeted on Roblox to harm her younger sibling, um, and the sibling had to be hospitalized.
I mean, there's also there's all sorts of things.
And so this is this would fall under the uh nihilist uh violent extremism.
Um and the one of the the main goals is to destabilize society.
They're accelerationists, not you know, not in like the Nick Land sense of the word accelerationist, but um they're they they want they want things to burn to the ground um and it and it's hard it's it's gotten some mainstream coverage like you know in wired um and the washington post also did something in der Spiegel but for the most part um you know the the like info wars has paid the most attention even to like perfectly legit researchers because it
sounds unbelievable it sounds like a moral panic it sounds like it's like how could this be happening and um you know more established uh outlets are like you know like this is crazy um but it's it's i mean it's it's really it's really happening and i think it's um i think it's fair to be uh skeptical and to say i don't want to you know i don't want to uh create a moral panic about this i don't think it's like you you let your kid play roblox and suddenly they're being like virtually molested and
shepherded into these discords.
servers where they're being fire hosed with gore and uh CSAM it's you know it's not it's not that crazy but that if you have a you know a precocious kid or a kid who's angsty or uh maybe is more vulnerable it's something that could happen.
It's just like, you know, like pedophiles with the early internet.
It's not that every single person who is on Yahoo Messenger or in AOL chat rooms was being harassed by pedophiles, but it was a real thing that could happen that, you know, would behoove parents to be aware of.
You know, some of the initial coverage of the Charlie Kirk shooter accused him of being a groiper, which, as you note, has kind of been the stand-in term for kind of alt-right conservative online movements that has replaced what incel, the term incel played in the past.
But the early coverage of this seems to have been inaccurate.
There's no, so far, no real connective tissue connecting them to these certain online communities.
But could you just kind of zoom out and explain why we need more specificity when we describe these internet subcultures?
Is it helpful to kind of go in deep and explain it to viewers, for reporters to be more engaged in the discourse here?
I think a lot of these, like, broad brush, like, oh, it was a, you know, a far-right whatever, like, you know, just sort of quickly labeling people.
First of all, if these groups turn out to be actually dangerous, like in the case of 764, just randomly labeling things like, you know, oh, it's a groiper and we know he's a groiper because of this, this, and this.
How are we going to see the signs of when groups that actually pose a threat are identified, right?
So that, I mean, that's, it's just, you know, practically.
And then two, we live in a world where everyone has some sort of subcultural affiliation.
These groups aren't rare, you know, at least in terms of, like, you probably, like, viewers probably know three or four groipers, right?
Like, these types of identities are very rare.
are very common um and it really it makes people trust journalists less when they just sort of start throwing spaghetti at a wall and start labeling you know everything is X or Y. I mean another thing you know that I think people have been clowning on is um either you know I think it was like Governor Cox of of Utah and then there was some other like uh bit you know big uh media personality was saying the dark reddit culture that's uh radicalizing
or young men it's like what are you talking about you know like when you say stuff like that when you're talking about something serious that is really deserving of attention um both by just the public at large and also authorities and then you you garble it in that way you how are you expected to be taken seriously so it's it's it's it's a cultural thing and it's also like pragmatically like you know leave the kid in the maga hat alone i think it has very
strong parallels to the of public discourse we've seen over the last year around anti-Semitism in that many folks who who are uh supportive of Israel have attempted to censor and castigate uh any kind of opponent of the Israeli government or critic of Israeli policies As anti-Semitic.
And by painting with such a broad brush, they've kind of uh made it very difficult to identify the true anti-Semites because there is a lot of anti-Jewish bigotry.
There is actual hate.
And by categorizing it all, you know, all together as one big thing, it muddles the discourse and makes actual bigots and dangerous extremists easier to hide in plain view.
It I mean it happens all the time.
And I think it's it's it's a product also of journalists under are under a lot of pressure.
It's like, you know, you need to some people are filing more than one piece a day, they're doing multiple media hits a day, they're getting really tired.
Um, you know, the thing it reminds me most of is when everything was alt-right all of a sudden.
And what ended up happening is like this small community actually grew and sort of the fake news coverage blew it up and made it really alluring and really interesting.
And then it's like it the then the term just eventually became meaningless.
But it was a, you know, it was a real thing that was worthy of coverage that was having its own influence that was growing in its own way.
Um, but it was just like suddenly it's like everything was all right, you know, like uh the you know, at some point going to the gym was far right.
Sort of a definite at one point.
Right.
And it's it's just it's it who is it helping?
It's not, it's it's not even injured, it's not even just education for its own sake.
It's just it's I mean, it's it's slop.
It's it's journalists sort of needing to pump stuff out for its own sake, which I sympathize with.
Yeah, and and you know, actually, this kind of gets me to just one other question I wanted to ask.
Um, because what how do you thread the needle in a responsible way?
Because it seems like a the mixed metaphor is uh uh double-edged sword here.
Um I I will just point out that like, you know, there was a march of neo-Nazis, I believe in 2001 or 2002 in Washington, DC.
And back then, um, there was a media norm when neo-Nazis marched, and you know, you could always kind of gather 500 neo-Nazis anywhere in the country.
If in a country of 300 million people, they're of course going to be extremists of that type of ideology.
And when they gathered in Washington, DC, there was basically a media blackout.
There's a tiny Washington Times story, there's like a few paragraph Washington Post story relegated to the back pages, no TV coverage, no major coverage.
It was ignored, and you know, it it the rally happened, 500 people came to Washington, DC, and it kind of went away.
You compare that to Charlottesville, uh, 20 some years later, uh, or almost 20 years later, you have almost more journalists there than actual participants.
You have wall-to-wall cable news coverage, you have people live streaming, and that kind of spins out of control into violence and to potentially actually encouraging with this over-saturated media coverage, but I I think one could persuasively argue that uh this kind of unnecessarily obsessive tabloid style coverage of the extreme right of of this of this kind of subculture led more people to uh consider joining it to create a frenzy that was was maybe out
of proportion.
Oh, I absolutely I totally agree.
And I mean, like the other piece of this is like not only do we not have people, well, we we have some people who are like real specialists in understanding internet culture, but they you know, they they're independent or they're locked behind academic paywalls.
Um, but we also don't have enough people who are really talking about the the media ecology, right?
Like there is something to be said about um the way stories are reported, which stories uh generate clicks, um, how they're chosen, that journalists have to be influencers now, that everyone feels like they need to be a micro influencer.
I mean, there's a lot of different things that are affecting the way we um both receive and understand information.
Well, Catherine, I want to thank you again for your time.
Um, again, Catherine D and uh your subsack is default friend.
Uh, appreciate you joining System Update.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Have a great day.
Our next guest uh is Evan Barker.
She is a former Democratic fundraiser, democratic operative on the progressive side.
Um, she really kind of made waves last summer um by denouncing the Kamala Harris ticket, supporting Donald Trump.
She writes a fantastic Substack at Evan Barker.substack.com.
Uh You'll find her on Fox News and other media outlets.
Evan, so good to see you again.
Hey, Lee, thanks for having me on.
Thanks for thinking of me.
Well, I couldn't think of a better guest to talk about this subject.
No, it's kind of a sprawling subject for this episode of System Update, where there's kind of two dynamics at play, but that are interlinked, at least in my mind.
And that is from the little we know about the suspected shooter of Charlie Kirk, Tyler Robinson.
We don't know his full political ideology.
We don't know everything about him yet.
There's been a lot of misinformation, bad reporting initially.
So I want to caveat that.
But the little we do know seems to fit a pattern that this is a young man who uh you know on the ammunition cartridges.
He he wrote little messages referencing meme culture, internet culture, um, kind of video game culture.
We live in a in a period where there is a gigantic dislocation of young men.
Young men are addicted to video games, they're socially isolated, they're not going out, they're not getting married, um, they are experiencing all kinds of self-harm in terms of drugs and alcohol.
And uh on the flip side of that, and maybe interlinked, at least um from my perspective, is that Charlie Kirk Kirk, uh, for whatever you want to say about him and his politics, he did have a positive message towards young men that really contrasted with the way the Democrats talk about men.
He he he offered um empathy and a positive message of pull yourself up from the bootstraps, get out and socialize, get out and run for uh run for office or get involved in politics, get married, go to church, um, be be a good person and and be a contributing member of your society and your community.
And I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about this as someone who's who's worked so long in politics.
Um what's your perspective on the state of young men?
Oh my gosh, yeah, that is such a sprawling topic indeed.
Um, you know, there's quite a few things that initially come to mind.
I think when we're talking about young men today, there's a lot of stats that we can draw on just immediately.
Um I think now for the first time ever, um, men are much less likely to go to college than women are.
Only about uh 40% of all college-age men, or yeah, college-age men are actually going to college.
Um, whereas like 60% of incoming freshman classes are actually female.
Um, so that's one stat to look at.
I think I've even seen studies that show that in classrooms, and this is something that you know, as the mother of it of a of a boy, I have a a toddler, um, teachers are more likely to actually um discipline young boys for the same behavior as female students in classrooms.
And I feel like that's something that I've even noticed, just watching my son and like his interactions with other girls, you know, his age now.
It's just like there is more of this sort of like um tendency to sort of call out and um penalize sort of like just natural boy behavior that we even see is like you know, in a very young age.
Um, but I also think you know, there's like there's this economic element as well that um you know, young people today feel like homeownership is out of reach, they feel like education is out of reach.
Um, you know, I have young men in my family that didn't go to college, that live in you know the middle of the country and feel locked out of job opportunities.
They feel like they're they are in a cycle of working sort of like these dead-end jobs, low-wage, low-paying jobs.
Um, and you know, they couldn't hack it in college, and so what opportunities are available to them are very few and far between.
Um, and so I think that That has some impact.
At the same time, if it were just economic, I think we'd see females also feeling disaffected at a level similar to men.
And I don't think that they're compared, I don't think they're comparable right now.
And so I think part of it is also cultural.
And I think that, you know, just as somebody that worked in democratic politics for a long time, um, I saw, you know, the culture towards men, especially young men, um, become increasingly hostile, increasingly antagonistic.
You know, I I there was a point in time when I was working in progressive politics where I feel like I couldn't go into a Zoom meeting or um onto a call with other operatives where there wasn't some like denunciation of um, or sorry, not there was there wasn't some denouncement of white men, especially.
Um and so I think it's sort of like a confluence of social isolation, as you said, um, economic factors, and it's cultural.
And I think that has crept into our politics, and Charlie Kirk was an antidote to that.
You know, there are the the day that he um that he died, my my brother called me, and he's got um two young boys.
Uh one is a freshman in high school and the other one is in middle school.
And he was just like, I don't know how I'm gonna explain this to my sons.
Like they absolutely adored him.
He was a positive role model.
That's the first thing my brother said.
Like, that's the very first thing he said.
You know, he encouraged them to like get married, follow traditional values, you know, even if you don't agree with traditional values, like there's something positive about that, you know.
Um and so yeah, I feel like that is that is uh especially a gut punch to people right now, is sort of like processing all of this, and what does it mean?
For a party, the Democratic Party that has been grounded in material conditions, a party that was rooted in the 20th century in labor unions and the working class and growing the middle class.
It just seems like there's this bitter irony or contrast right now that as you mentioned that young men aren't doing well materially, that they're dropping out, a lot of them aren't having difficulty finding jobs, even if they do go to college, and yet um progressives and the party don't seem to see their pain.
Um there's just kind of a reflexive view that, especially for for young white men, but for men in general, yeah, that they're part of some type of oppressor class, or because of um some kind of historical gender norm, that you know, there's no space for empathy for young men.
How do you do you think that this dynamic has changed?
I mean, this is something that's been talked about a lot in the media over the last few years, but it it does is the Democratic Party or or are progressive groups seeing the light that there is a crisis among young men, that they need to change their ways.
No, no, and I think I think that is the slap in the face, right?
It's that the irony is that the Democratic Party used to be this party that was grounded in labor unions.
I think before the night, you know, I'm sure you read all about this, but before the 1972 McGovern Commission changes at the DNC, labor unions had um a seat at the table.
Like they were just as important as state parties.
Um, and I think that that obviously influenced a lot of the policy decisions back then.
And you know, as time has gone on, we've seen this like inverse thing happen where college educated people have become increasingly democrat and working class people have become increasingly Republican.
And I think, you know, the slap in the face is that they are, you know, young men are being told by the modern you know, Democratic Party culture.
I'm not gonna say that it's necessarily like people uh like Joe Biden going out and explicitly saying this, right?
Or or Barack Obama explicitly saying this, but um, there is like a like a subtext to what they're saying that yes, you know, you have become disaffected in society, you can't afford a home, you can't get ahead.
Um, but at the same time, you are the oppressor class.
Like there is something inherently wrong with your existence.
You know, I think those are the subliminal messages that these young men are hearing.
And um, I there is this massive disconnect.
I mean, I just remember when I used to work in progressive politics, like the majority of the people that I worked with, including men, were these very highly educated people that often came from backgrounds of going to Harvard or Yale or would go there soon after working in politics for a couple of years and get their master's degree right at Harvard or something like that.
And they just could not understand the reality of people like my cousin in Missouri who, you know, went to college for went to community college for one semester, um, on some sort of like rural program for you know, uh young people in Missouri that um need help with with affording college.
And I think he went and it was completely paid for.
Um, but I think he would have been much better suited to probably go into some sort of apprenticeship program, actually.
And you know, you've just heard you know, the last five years.
I remember uh wiping student loan debt was like this huge thing.
And I remember my colleagues especially were just so excited by this, and they were like, yes, this is the answer that young people want.
But I at the time, even though I carried $30,000 for the student loans that I still have that I just got an email about that I'm gonna need to start dealing with soon.
Um, but I remember thinking, wow, I wonder what somebody like my cousin thinks about that.
Um or my uncles who paid union dues their whole lives, and never had anybody pay off their union dues.
And actually, I ended up talking to um to one of those uncles about debt-free college and about and about the Biden admins push to do this thing that I think was sort of just a giveaway to their base.
Um, and he said it made him feel bad.
He said it it made him feel angry because he was like, those kids that went to college, like I'm glad they did, good for them, but they're going to make more money in their lifetimes over their lifetimes than I ever will.
And it's true, the college wage premium is a real thing.
I think I saw some stat that said that like over like if you have a four-year degree, you make almost like twice as much as somebody who doesn't um throughout your lifetime.
So, like, why are we paying anyway?
Sorry, I'm kind of going off, but I think um just the disconnect that I would see from my colleagues and people that that work in democratic politics was was profound.
And I think when you couple that with uh this culture that that it demonizes people and like you said, not just white men, but men in general, um it's gonna have there's gonna be consequences to that.
You know, I I look at Charlie Kirk's life, and you know, just from uh kind of macro level, just like kind of sweeping view of of what he's accomplished, what he's done as an adult, um, as someone who's fairly high agency, you know, he was he didn't come from uh political family, he wasn't handed the reins to an organization.
He decided, hey, I wanted to get involved in politics as a high schooler, you know, who's watching the two parties uh kind of kind of come together.
He was inspired by some of the messages and some of his favorite radio hosts, and he went out and started an organization.
He saw an opportunity in that, hey, here are university campuses that are dominated by liberals that you know are becoming, especially back in the period when he was growing Turning Point USA, um, this kind of woke era from maybe 2014 to 2024.
You know, this is an a place that is hostile to views that are perceived as conservative.
And I'm gonna go into the belly of the beast, I'm gonna create these viral moments on a daily basis that elevate my own profile that raise tens of millions of dollars because people see someone doing something inspiring, and I'm gonna go channel that money into training centers to train like-minded young conservatives to go out and spread my message.
And you know, uh there are plenty of comments that Charlie Kirk made that I might disagree with, you know, we have different views, like you know, any pundit, we don't see eye to eye on everything, but just from a purely tactical level, Charlie Kirk was a brilliant political organizer.
And I and I and I see the way the Democrats and leftists, you know, that nation editorial that I think was was very silly and poorly written um the other day, um, cascading him as just like a a hateful bigot, and that's really just been the reflexive response from much of the left.
But they don't understand that, you know, for a party that deifies political organizing.
He was a political organizer.
He did a great job in in winning and growing uh the MAGA tent among a demographic that used to be a core constituency for the Democratic Party among young people, especially young men.
I maybe I know the answer to this, but I wanted to ask your perspective on on this dynamic.
And if the left is is is is seeing any of this.
I mean is it is it just that they they are offended by his views on race and identity and crime and some of these other hot buttons, and they they miss the force for the trees, or do you think some people might recognize that there's a problem here?
And Charlie Kirk was tapping into something very real.
I mean, I think some of them are um like I'm sure you saw that Ezra Klein op-ed he wrote in the the New York Times where he explicitly said what you just said, which was wow, like I he was a really great organizer and I envied what he built.
Um I think you know, for the majority, I think that the mainstream democratic politicians and even the progressive politicians have put out pretty nice things in the wake of his passing.
But you're right, there is this like visceral reaction that we've seen online just from people that are just voters of democratic politicians and that identify as progressive that is ugly and um you can't really deny it.
Like it's it was um as uh present in my feed the day that he died as the um the video of him being killed was, if if not more so, actually.
So um I don't think that they give him the credit of being a great community organizer.
I don't think most of them really even put a lot of thought into how he built or why he built what he did.
And I think that really speaks to the disconnect in general that Democrats and progressives have with broadening their coalition right now.
I mean, if you look at what they said in reaction to his death, like you said, there's so many people that just said, oh, he was a bigot, or he was hateful, or his rhetoric was divisive.
But if you actually watch the videos, he would calmly and politely say to people that like I saw a video of him talking to a man who identified as a gay conservative, right?
And he's like, I personally as a Christian disagree with your lifestyle.
However, in politics, you have to invite people into your fold.
You have to, you know, that's that's smart politics, and you're welcome in the conservative movement always, you know, and it's not really my business what you do in your private life.
And I think like that's something that progressives especially could, and Democrats in general could could take a lesson from.
And I think right now they are facing this existential moment where their coalition is shrinking.
And I think the only way forward for them truly is a path of heterodoxy, of a of accepting and recognizing that people are going to have different views, and that the automatic response Cannot just be to shut people down who have views that you don't like.
And clearly, you know, if you actually watch Charlie Kirk's videos, that's something that he did really well.
And from everything, and I'll say this as somebody that was on the Democratic side.
And right, and by the way, I voted for Donald Trump in 2024, but I don't consider myself a Republican.
I have a lot of views that are very much still, especially on economics that are more left-leaning.
But I will say that I think as somebody that was on the left for a long time and is now more in the center independent.
Um, when I left the Democratic Party, I received, like, an insane amount of just, like, nice messages from people.
Um, yeah.
Not people that were judging me for my previous beliefs or you know, professional decisions, but people that were just like welcoming me with open arms.
One of those messages was from Charlie Kirk.
And when he and when he wrote, when he DM'd me, um he told me that he was uh with RFK that day, another former Democrat.
He made a point of saying that.
And so I think that um I think that's a real striking cultural differences between the two sides.
Like when people leave the the Republican Party and go to the like, I've seen this.
I've seen even people that voted for Donald Trump come out in the last six months that haven't liked some of the things that he that he's done, and they've said like that they have some regrets or whatever.
The left isn't welcoming to them.
No, it's quite the opposite.
I've seen so many tweets, TikToks, some columns, where former people who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 came out and said, I regret my vote, you know, that I've been disappointed or betrayed on certain policies.
You get an outpouring of people on social media saying, well, this is you get what you deserve, you know.
This is oh, I wouldn't, I didn't think uh the the lions would eat would it would eat the cub, that type of thing, you know.
Like and it's it's a lot of hostility, not a lot of welcoming for someone who might be open to joining the other side.
Yeah, and I think I find that to be a huge, and so Charlie Kirk understood that, and that was one of the things that he that made him such a great political strategist and and organizer.
And and I was also thinking about this Lee.
I was like, man, the left does not have any Charlie Kirk.
Like it just does not exist on that side, right?
And why is that?
You know, I mean, think about what he built with Turning Point.
It was the the lar the biggest or the closest equivalent I can find to a national organization that aims to organize young people for the Democratic Party is Next Gen America, uh, which is Tom Steyr's organization.
Um they just didn't have like, I mean, they didn't host conferences and have like this whole uh superpower digital media ecosystem of spawning social media stars while also at simultaneously raising tons of money and um you know recruiting candidates on the left and supporting them and no, there's no comparison.
And you know, I I made this point on Twitter the other day that hey, let's objectively look at what he built.
This is something that's huge that trains people has always spin-off media personalities, with Candace Owens being the biggest, but there are many others who kind of came up through the turning points USA.
Jack Worth, yeah.
And there's no one on the left, and then of course there are people that said, Oh, well, you don't understand the the right has billionaires, you know, the left doesn't.
It's like, wait a second, you know, I think you could speak.
Tap me in, tap me in.
No, it's it's and of course the the rich irony in that is that the the biggest national youth organized uh youth organizing movement or organization on the left was literally funded and created by a billionaire, Tom Steyr, who just plugs in people, plugs in staff to sort of direct it.
Totally top down, you know.
Exactly, completely top down.
Um, and then on the opposite side of that, you've got Charlie Kirk, who, like you said, didn't really come from like a super politically active family.
I don't think he he was uh I don't think his family was particularly wealthy.
Um seemed more like a middle class upbringing.
I could be wrong on that, but that's that's what I gather from what I read about him.
I think his family is pretty private, but um, yeah, I feel like he had probably a pretty middle class upbringing and just you know, felt disenfranchised in college and saw that there was this void um on college campuses, this need that wasn't being met, and then um organized around that need.
And um, yeah, it's just like it just doesn't exist on the left.
And I I've had people ask me this week, like, well, why?
And I've been trying to pin it, you know, pin it down.
And I think part of it is like uh related to this broader existential problem that Democrats have right now of just not being able to call in, not being able to get people under their tent feeling, you know, all of these like different purity tests that they've that they put up.
Um I don't know, it's just and then and then I thought about this.
I was like, if Charlie Kirk was a leftist, like let's imagine for a minute that he was a progressive um and was super excited about the environment and giving people universal health care, like that was you know, like his thing, right?
And he went on to like would he have been able to grow and to have been as successful on the left as he was on the right.
That's a great thought experiment.
And just by being a young man who, you know, wanted to ruffle feathers and kind of create an organization.
It just it's hard to imagine because you look at the leftist influencers who have done well in the digital media space, virtually all of them, you know, there are many that have raised millions of dollars, many millions of dollars, and amassed multi-million, tens of millions of followers, popular podcasters, whether it's Chapo Traphouse or Hassan Piker or you know, the young Turks.
There's there's there's a lot of examples of these uh for lack of a better term, influencers, but none of them actually pooled those resources into creating an institution, an organization that actually has members that trains like-minded people that goes out and does the hard work of organizing, despite all the rhetoric the left has around community organizing.
Hardly anyone actually does it.
Yeah, I think Jane Hugd tried, right?
I mean, like the young Turks has tried to do that.
Um, I think he was a part of the founding of Justice Democrats as well.
Um, which tried to do that.
But that never came together as a national organization.
No, no.
And there's something, I don't know, or something.
I haven't quite articulated why.
Um yeah, I don't know why either, but it's there's there's an irony here, you know.
Um, and I just want to point out that that kind of I don't know if it's hypocrisy or lack of ability or interest.
I'm not sure.
Um, but it's certainly something, you know.
I want to kind of actually, while I still have you uh ask another kind of related question, Charlie Kirk, um, who's promoted some of my reporting on um social media censorship, and you know, I've I've gone on his show and talked about these issues and others, you know.
He's uh my few interactions with with him were very friendly.
He was very kind, uh even though we acknowledged that we had many points of disagreement.
Um but he was a big voice for uh free speech.
Um he saw the kind of dangers in uh creeping uh government influence in social media and attempts to use uh scare terms like hate speech uh as a as a cudgel to sh to shut down uh opposition political speech or to violate the First Amendment.
Um it seems like in a in the in kind of in this moment of grief, uh in this moment of tragedy, there are many on the right, including and especially in the Trump administration, who are hoping to instrumentalize this moment to crack down on speech.
Um we saw Attorney General Pam Bondi saying that hate speech um isn't protected by the First Amendment, that they were hoping to prosecute people for hateful speech around Charlie Kirk.
You've seen um several other administration officials saying that they're going to harness the powers of the home Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Uh Department to crack down on um supposed donors who are funding hateful speech, although they've been very vague about what that actually means.
What's your view on this?
Man, you know, I would just say, and I but by the way, I saw that clip, Pam Bondi, and I was um I was it made me nervous.
Um just because, yeah, it's as you said, like hate speech is gross as it is, um, and as nasty and despicable as it has been to see many, many, many videos on social media over the past week of people dancing on the grave of Charlie Kirk.
It's been really, really gross and has made me sick to my stomach.
Um we do live in a country where we have a First Amendment.
And I would just caution people on the right that are grieving right now and in pain and are rightfully really, really upset about what they're seeing.
That if there's some sort of like laws that are passed that sort of limit free speech, that those can eventually be used against them at some point.
You know, think back to 2020, think back to you know to the Biden years um when the Democratic Party was in power.
Think about the the news article that came out um a week and a half ago about this man in in England who was just arrested for criticizing aspects of the trans movement or trans, I I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was something related um to trans ideology, and he was arrested for that.
And you know, I thought that that was outrageous.
Um so we just need to be careful because we have something very, very special in America that people don't have in most of the rest of the world, and that includes many uh first world countries like the United Kingdom.
Um I was really, really hopeful this morning after seeing that clip late last night, that she did come out, Pam Bondi came out.
I don't know if you saw the tweet, and she sort of clarified her statements and she reiterated that yes, hate speech is protected as gross as it is.
Um, but that speech calling for violence is not, and of course that's true.
Um, and I was also hopeful to see um so many influencers and people on the right this morning that came out and denounced what she said, including Megan Kelly.
I don't know if you saw what she wrote, but she's an attorney, and obviously she was a really close friend of Charlie Kirk's and is grieving right now, and um and came out and basically denounced Pam Bondi's statement.
So yeah, what about you?
What are you thinking?
Look, I I I just I've I see very few principled defenders of free speech.
Um, you know, the party out of power is typically the one to champion it.
There are many fair weather supporters where it's really when the political wins are at their backs and they realize that it's a principle that they can wield to garner public support that they champion it.
But once they're in the seat of power and they have the opportunity to censor their opponents, the vast majority, I don't know, you know, it's hard to quantify, but almost everyone is is a hypocrite on this.
Um but it is nice to see that there uh exactly as you as you mentioned.
Um I think there was kind of a moment where you know, there's been this growing censorious kind of agenda within this Trump administration, whether on Palestinian activists on college campuses, on some of the visa issues, uh on some of the college funding issues.
And this broke through in the moment because I think Pam Bondi let the mass slip by using the term hate speech, because that's the term that the liberals usually use.
And they said, well, and a lot of conservatives realized, hey, wait a second, this sounds exactly like what the Biden administration used in terms of a rubric used to censor conservatives.
If she had used the term like we're gonna go after terroristic speech, um probably there wouldn't be as much of a backlash.
That being said, I am heartened um that at least a number of very prominent conservatives, uh, including some Republican uh in in office and elsewhere have spoken out against those comments and hopefully we'll reign in the Trump administration, but I am very concerned.
Yeah, when it people gotta remember like whatever laws are passed can eventually be turned around and used on you at some point when you know your party isn't in power.
So I think uh man, 2020 wasn't that long ago, but it feels like people have kind of already forgotten.
I sent you that tweet thread last night of all of the major cancellations of 2020.
You were on it.
Yeah, I recognized.
I didn't even realize that when I sent it to you.
Um that yeah, it it feels like it was uh 50 years ago, but it it really really wasn't, and so it's in it's incredible just to see that it's it does feel like ancient history, but it was not that long ago, and all these dynamics have not left society, they've just kind of transformed and in some ways morphed.
Um where conservatives are are are using some of the same tactics and even rhetoric, and society is just kind of jumping from one moral panic to the next.
Uh and and and cancel culture has returned.
Um any last thoughts, Evan.
Um, just that I'm really really sorry to everyone that I know that lost a good friend this week.
I knew I knew a couple of his friends, and um it's it's like horrible, you know.
I've I've lost uh people that are close to me.
I lost my dad, I lost my brother.
Um, and it's like the worst thing that anyone could go through, especially for his little kids.
So um I'm just uh I'm saying a prayer for our country right now and for the Kirk family.
Thank you.
Yeah, and thanks again for joining us in System Update.
