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- [00:00]
Kristen
Hey Kristen, how's it tracking with Carvana Value Tracker?
- [00:04]
Matthew Remsky
What else?
- [00:05]
Kristen
Oh, it's tracking in fact. Value surge alert. Trucks up 2.5%, vans down 1.7.
- [00:13]
Julian Walker
Just as predicted.
- [00:15]
Derek Barris
Mm.
- [00:15]
Julian Walker
So we gonna.
- [00:16]
Kristen
I don't know. Could sell, could hold the power to.
- [00:20]
Unknown
Always know our car's worth.
- [00:21]
Kristen
Exhilarating, isn't it? Tracking Always know your car's worth with carvana value tracker. 5:00am I'm up with a crisp Celsius energy drink running 12 miles today. Grab a green juice, quick change and head to work. Meetings, workshops. One more Celsius. No slowing down, working late, but obviously still meeting the girls for a little dancing. Celsius Live Fit. Go grab a cold refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now@celsius.com.
- [01:06]
Unknown
Hey everyone. Welcome to Conspirituality where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism. I'm Derek Barris.
- [01:17]
Matthew Remsky
I'm Matthew Remsky.
- [01:18]
Julian Walker
I'm Julian Walker.
- [01:19]
Unknown
You can find us on Instagram and threads Conspiracy Spirituality Pod. We are also all individually over on Blue sky and you can access all of our episodes ad free, plus our Monday bonus episodes over on patreon@patreon.com conspirituality if you are on Apple podcasts, you can access our Monday bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions. We are independent media creators so you make this possible and we really appreciate your support.
- [01:57]
Matthew Remsky
Episode 262 Dems Ask what is a man?
- [02:02]
Julian Walker
In the aftermath of the devastating 2024 election, and as 2025 hurtles toward a full authoritarian takeover, legacy media and Democratic strategists all have the same question on their lips. What is going on with young men? While Kamala Harris still won the overall 18 to 29 year old demographic by 6%, Trump improved his share by 9 points as compared to 2020. But men in that age group are the bigger story. They voted for Trump by 16% more than women did. What explains this? Perhaps this is about how successfully the right has commandeered and inflamed the anxieties and resentments of young men on social media. Red pilled hyper masculine anti woke conspiracy influencers are filling the gap created by the meaning crisis. Perhaps the left needs its own Joe Rogan. It's all very confusing, but not to worry. Top political consultants Elise Hogue and John de Volpe have pitched a new research initiative to the Democratic Party donor class. The widely derided Sam or Speaking with American Men project comes with a proposed $20 million budget for the first two years of seeking to win back the young men from the right. No cap, bro. They'll low key give center left corporate politics the riz it needs to slay the maga simps and cape for democracy.
- [03:32]
Unknown
All right guys, why are we covering this topic as three young men Gen zers as we are? No, we are middle aged men, but we were once young men so we might have some insights. And on this podcast we we've spent five years looking at how right wing or right leaning media figures use very predictable tropes and affects to jack their brands. And we've endlessly covered one of their main communication networks, the manif manosphere podcast circuit whose testosterone fueled pseudoscience and often misogynistic bro science helped push Trump into the White House. Now with Sam, Democrats are trying to do something about it. So we wanted to step back and look at what that is and what that means for our beat.
- [04:19]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah. So the Speaking to American Men project is headed up as, as Julian said, by Elise Hogue, who's 55. She previously served as president of NARAL Pro Choice America. She's working with John Della Volpe. I couldn't find his age, but I'm guessing he's late 50s or something like that. He's the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. He specializes in Gen Z vot and former Texas representative Colin Allred, who's 42, he's the lawyer and former NFLer who lost to Ted Cruz in one of the most expensive Senate races in history. So this is the mom and two dads who are going to talk to the kids. And the most street cred prior I see in this team is that Volpe has a pretty well reviewed 2023 book. It's called Fight How Gen Z is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America. Uh, the foreword is by David Hogg, who's the parkland survivor. And in it Volpe argues that leaning into the progressive values of this 70 million strong demographic on justice, climate, gun violence, wealth inequality, housing shortages, that is actually the wave of the future. Now, Hogg recently got pushed out of the DNC mainly for plans to primary rightward leaning Democratic legislators. So that went too far. So I think, you know, we can see that Volpe's pitch is going to be working against the party tide. Now, so far Sam has run 30 focus groups. It's not clear how large they are, but they've been with men aged 18 to 29 and they have conducted a national Media Consumption Survey. They're trying to understand things like Discord, Twitch, YouTube, gaming, sports, DIY content. Their eventual aim is to engage in contract with progressive influencers and to show Democratic hopefuls how to use, you know, YouTube and in game ads and stuff like that, and network and gaming communities and so on. Their primary takeaways so far are that many young men feel invisible to the Democrats and perceive the party as weak and overly cautious, but they also believe neither party truly has their back. That they are feeling overlooked or deceived is emerging as a major theme.
- [06:31]
Julian Walker
Right, and the context for all of this, as we said at the top, is that in the 2024 election we we ended up with a startling gender gap in that age range. 16% more Gen Z men than women voted for Trump has the left leaning hope of a more predictably traditional religious reactionary set of voters dying off to be replaced by an up and coming progressive generation been upended by these young men being lost to Andrew Tate style aspirational anti feminism, Roganesque conspiracism and Charlie Kirk's anti woke campus crusades. Maybe. But the trend amongst young men was also part of an overall shift. Like Kamala Harris still won the black and Latino vote, but in both cases with 6% less choosing her over Trump than in the previous election. And men were decisive in that black and brown shift toward the right between 2016 and 2024 elections. Black voters overall support for Trump Is improved by 12% while Latinos shifted his way by 15%. Both white men and white women also shifted from Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024 by around 8%. So the issue of race can of course not be ignored here. But the across the board shifts from Biden to Trump may indicate generalizable reticence to elect a female president. I'm very sad to say in gendered terms, Trump won the male vote by 12% while Harris won women overall by 2%, which was still less than Biden's 15% lead with women. Another key takeaway was that the more closely people followed the news, the more likely they were to have voted for Harris, while Trump voters were more likely to be less educated, less consistent in their voting, and to have paid less attention to news and politics in the run up to the election. Still, the startling gender gap amongst Gen Z voters is a good place for Dems to start. So what about these young men? I went in search for answers from the guru that every wisdom seeking man on the Internet turns to.
- [08:39]
Jordan Peterson
People have been after me For a long time because I've been speaking to disaffected young men. Now, what a terrible thing to do that is. I thought the marginalized were supposed to have a voice.
- [08:54]
Matthew Remsky
It's making you emotional.
- [08:55]
Derek Barris
Talk about it.
- [08:55]
Jordan Peterson
Well, God, you know, it's very difficult to understand how demoralized people are. And certainly many young men are in that category.
- [09:07]
Matthew Remsky
It's an amazing study in how like the mythos of a person, and maybe they're like, I don't know, their Batman suits can protect an influencer from their own cringe content. Like, I'm always amazed that he can can still do this stuff and still be on his run.
- [09:24]
Julian Walker
So one thing we know for sure, we can say about Jordan Peterson, he's always a compassionate champion for the marginalized. Yeah, but he's not the only one. Guys, here's the top dog bro, science optimization supplement peddler and alleged pro level lying womanizer, Andrew Huberman. Yeah.
- [09:41]
Unknown
One thing I'm increasingly concerned about is it's depression rates of young men in the United States. But we have a serious, serious crisis of identity that people are starting to talk about. But even the mere mention of it, it sounds like, oh, no, they're all gonna rally together and do bad things. No, these young guys are so confused about whether or not they have any worth in the world. I think most of it starts with lack of, I'm just gonna say it, of a strong, in the right sense of the word, paternal figure.
- [10:12]
Matthew Remsky
I am so sort of disappointed at how easily it is for these guys to manipulate something real. And, you know, in terms of this particular argument, we've been hearing this from the right wing for 40 years or more. And if you really talk about, you know, the absence of the father enough times, the subtext is also that women aren't good enough parents and guides. And within that is, is also this, like, complete bypass of the fact that the diminishing middle class has gone double income, but caregiving labor has not equalized between the genders. So women are at work, but they're expected to be primary caregivers. And then they're blamed if there's less time. But it is, as I say, super manipulative because paternal alienation is real. It's a real experience.
- [11:02]
Unknown
I also wonder if the Democrats would spend $20 million trying to figure out why women are voting the way that they do. There isn't. There's this cultural emphasis on young men, and yet, well, I mean, in general, women have gone more democratic, which is important. Yeah, but there's still, there's still so many long standing biases towards trying to rally the male vote without any emphasis on women. And yet when women are talked about, it's usually weaponized by someone like RFK Jr who will trot out the statistic that more teenage girls are suffering from depression than ever before. His words. So we need to get them off SSRIs. Like it's only contextually when it fits into their anti. Whatever messaging that they actually start to focus on women.
- [11:54]
Julian Walker
Yeah, yeah. I mean suddenly these, it's a repetition of things we've been hearing at least since Rush Limbaugh. Right. But now it's this new type of influencer who frames it in psychological terms. And then what do you. On the next episode that Andrew Huberman does, he's going to reference Jonathan Haidt's statistics about girls being so terribly impacted by social media.
- [12:16]
Matthew Remsky
I just want to just review the statistics though that you gave Julian with regard to Darris comment about like, well, why are we studying men and not women? Harris won women overall by 2% but that was less than Biden's 15% lead with women.
- [12:32]
Julian Walker
Yes.
- [12:32]
Matthew Remsky
Is that actually the more salient statistic here?
- [12:36]
Julian Walker
It might be. I mean it's one of the things on the board. Right. And it shouldn't be overlooked. But to, to the point of what you were saying a moment ago, Matthew, like it's, it's so predictable how these folks will lean on the culture war kind of, they'll bang that culture war drum in this, in this very familiar way about oh, the problem is that women are not in the home anymore. Women are going out to work. Women have bought into the lie of feminism that they can have it all. Instead of the economic argument which is that women have to work.
- [13:06]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, yeah.
- [13:08]
Julian Walker
The household can survive under these current economic conditions unless you have two incomes. Right. Which was your point. So instead of talking about Gen Z, how about hearing from an actual Gen Z influencer. Here's the 26 year old manosphere figure and recent convert along with Andrew Tate to Islam. His name is Sneako.
- [13:28]
Sneako
So I would say to anyone watching this like you, this is why I think it's extremely important to, to believe in God or have some sort of religion. Because if you have no religion, if you have no God at all, what ends up becoming your God is wokeness. That's just what replaces it. Wokeness is degeneracy, is drugs, is the cancel culture thing, is living online and the celebrity drama, gossip, cancel culture being upset at other people invested in other People's lives, that whole woke social media hive mind that will replace it because humans just need some sort of religion.
- [14:00]
Unknown
The lack of imagination by the religious about what atheists are and how they filled the void in their words is always astounding to me.
- [14:11]
Matthew Remsky
Well, also points for the broadest definition of wokeness ever. Right. He's basically talking about modernity or complexity. I think also though, that when he says religion, that could be subbed out for like solidarity for material analysis. Like if what he's talking about is a sense of needing an epistemological community or you know, people who agree with you or support your stable and testable point of view on how the world works, then I mean, he doesn't need really to be talking about religion. That's all he's got.
- [14:39]
Julian Walker
Yeah, well, he's also got a bingo card and he's just like, if you run out of ideas, just start inserting degeneracy. Being on the Internet all the time. Celebrity gossip, that's what wokeness is. Wokeness is celebrity gossip. Didn't you realize? And it's because you're not going to church.
- [14:54]
Matthew Remsky
Right.
- [14:55]
Julian Walker
But he is talking about religion because that's, that's part of the shtick of these folks is that, you know, we've, we've drifted away from having a real sense of meaning and a moral compass because we've lost religion. And if we could just get back to that, it's, it's more of this lost golden age stuff.
- [15:10]
Matthew Remsky
Right.
- [15:11]
Julian Walker
But finally, here's Dr. Jordan Peterson again on Fox News promoting his new book. And remember, he's not technically a Christian. His new book called we who Wrestle with God.
- [15:22]
Jordan Peterson
Well, we haven't told a story of responsibility, really, especially to young people, not effectively, for about four generations. And the consequence of that is a crisis of meaning. And why work hard? Why be of service to other people? Because it imbues your life with the significance that enables you to tolerate the difficulties of your existence and without bitterness and with hope. That's all associated with meaning. The stories of the Bible, they're about you, whether you know it or not, obviously. Who else would they be about? I think you can attribute the fact of the culture war that's occurring everywhere in the west to a confusion about the nature of the story that should orient us in the world. And the academics, the postmodern types have put forward really the notion that life is about hedonistic pleasure or about power. And the problem with that is that both those stories are self defeating.
- [16:18]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [16:18]
Julian Walker
So we see Where Sneako gets it from. Right. It's that the postmodernists are about degeneracy.
- [16:23]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, yeah. So social justice, slavery, reparations, anti imperialism, breaking down gender essentials, examining privilege, seeking accountability in rape culture. None of these have anything to do with responsibility endorsing a felon. However, for president, that is responsibility. Jordan. So actually the crisis is over meaning. It's just over his meanings in the world, I think.
- [16:44]
Julian Walker
Yeah. So thanks for bearing with me, listeners. And you too. I wanted to take that little journey through men speaking about men on the Internet to illustrate a popular theme in that discourse. There's a meaning crisis in the west in general and especially for young men. Supposedly Peterson is a strong proponent of this idea, but I think its true pseudo intellectual roots perhaps go back to another psychology professor who I think of as the Mack Daddy sense maker, John Vervake.
- [17:13]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, you're going to have to say who that is for the. For the listeners.
- [17:15]
Julian Walker
Yeah. So listeners of Decoding the Gurus will be familiar with with verve. He's a professor of psychology and cognitive science and Buddhist psychology at the University of Toronto, so often spoken of as being a colleague of Jordan Peterson. He's very popular amongst those hyper abstract sense maker types, primarily through the vector of David Fuller's Rebel Wisdom channel that, you know, we've talked about a little bit here and there. He started a series of YouTube lectures called Awakening from the Meaning Crisis in January of 2019. And according to Vervaeke, the breakdown of traditional wisdom structures has caused a rise of nihilism and despair. Along with Peterson and another Canadian, for some reason that maybe you know, Matthew Jonathan Pageau, both of whom he's appeared with in interviews and public on stage discussions, Vervaeke is popular with right leaning male audiences as a voice for spiritual renewal.
- [18:09]
Matthew Remsky
I mean, I don't know why they're all from here, but the worst thing about the Canadian manosphere or manosphere aligned characters is that they seem more mild mannered, but like it's just. Just passive aggression.
- [18:20]
Julian Walker
Thanks for decoding that. Yeah. Either way, wherever the meaning crisis notion comes from, there's a ubiquitous kind of presence that it has within these circles. And it's a perfect example of something that manosphere podcasters say to sound like they're deep and smart and like they just care so much about the existential angst of young men, but I think they're actually just recycling lost golden age conservative bs. Vervaeke himself is less right wing, he's less anti feminist, and he seemed for a while more Squarely rooted in cognitive science. But as decoding the gurus have told us in a recent podcast, he's opened up about believing that he dialogues directly with the ancient Greek God Hermes.
- [19:03]
Matthew Remsky
All right, yeah, yeah.
- [19:04]
Julian Walker
I mean, it's, it's a good thing to have on your cv. The fact to me that popular psychology and personal growth where young men should be getting truly helpful information about maybe why they're feeling bummed out about things, have been hijacked by reactiones, reactionaries and charlatans. That's what's really sad to me. Like, it's not the shrinking middle class. It's not skyrocketing student debt or empty promises from charlatan optimizer and entrepreneur grindset coaches. It's not a lack of basic emotional intelligence and good relational self awareness made worse by rampant misogynist discourse that is driving male loneliness and despair. No, it's not that. It's feminism eroding their self esteem. It's Wokeness inducing white guilt. It's the loss of traditional religion crushing their sense of having been chosen by God to subjugate women and gays and rule over the earth. And many will also use this as an explanation for the so called rise of Wokeness. And we heard Sneako reference that. Right? Because you see, wokeness isn't really about progressive politics. It's a substitute for religion. And you heard a few references. So atheism, hedonism, nihilism, all leave a God shaped hole in the culture. And the poor deluded university students being influenced by postmodern Marxist professors have filled that hole with WOKE ideology. They had religious conversions, they demanded orthodox demonstrations of faith. They enacted witch hunts to cancel anyone who'd broken the sacred taboos and cast those not pure enough into hell. Hellfire. All because they'd forgotten about God. The meaning crisis trope is wheeled out as an explanation in the same way that people just don't trust institutions anymore is bandied about. And I put those in the same category. They may sound a little different, but in both cases the voices claiming to diagnose the problem are the ones who've created it. So no. RFK Jr. Jay Bhattacharya, Vinay Prasad, Marty Macari the medical science agencies you now rule didn't actually fail Americans. It's you who've endlessly repeated this in advance so that now you can destroy their good work with your pseudoscience. Libertarian recklessness. Young men have increasingly, along with their older counterparts, turned toward the kind of influencers that support Trump because of the algorithmic realities of social media in which superficial but sticky bad ideas gain traction by appealing to their most base emotions and ill considered intuitions. Gen Z, I think, has this the worst because it's all they've ever known. This deluge of online content that makes it almost impossible to distinguish conspiracy crap from investigative journalism or science informed analysis from manipulative pseudoscience, sincere personal growth exploration from cult indoctrination, and truly empowering political consciousness from faux populist propaganda.
- [22:02]
Matthew Remsky
Well, here's where I do have to say though, Julian, not all Gen Z. Because I think even in a meta conversation like this, it's good to be careful about sounding like we assume this generation doesn't have its own compass, tools, and a really big skill set I see developing in the tween culture. I know it hinges on skepticism and the capacity for meta discussions that I did not have a capacity for until I was in college. Like these are kids who recognize very early on that information comes to them through a discourse from different points of view. And so the kids I'm around are looking also at literally everything as though it could be AI generated, which is its own problem. I don't think credulity is going to be as much of an issue as nihilism in relation to the media sphere. So that is a meaning crisis, I think, but it's not one that the manosphere can really address.
- [22:57]
Julian Walker
No, that's interesting in terms of their them being savvy in ways that perhaps the boomers weren't able to be right about what they were looking at. Yeah, yeah. So last couple ideas from me here, the SAM project seems doomed to failure if it just tries to learn to speak the language of a new generation of men who've had their media literacy deranged, many of them by opportunistic propagandists and charlatans. Like I'm absolutely on board with policy and messaging that addresses material concerns, standard of living, social safety net, educational opportunities. But I don't think Democrats are going to meme war their way into coming across as anything but cringe.
- [23:38]
Unknown
I agree that it's doomed to failure, but for other reasons. We probably all have converging reasons of sorts. One thing about this project, and I want to preface it by saying that I understand that political parties have to test to understand messaging. So in terms of the broader theme of what they're going for, I get that that's just part of operating in a political climate in a culture. The thing that gets me about this project overall though, in this myopic focus on young men that really predates this particular poll testing. And what they're trying to do is the fact that women are tired of fucking carrying water for men. I've seen this for years. As, as long as this manosphere slash young male crisis has been going on, women in my life that I know, women that I follow on social media, and then just because of my algorithm, random people are like, we've dealt with men our entire lives. You men mostly do everything shitty and corrupt in this world. The reason there's war, the reason there's so many problems, and we've actually reached a place in American culture where both women and then minorities or foreigners, people coming into the country are doing better, better educated, getting better jobs. And now all of a sudden you're going to talk. You're all of a sudden you want to go to like this group therapy on podcasts and put everything back on us again. And it's just, it's this repetitive trope that happens over and over, but now it's being spotlighted in new ways because of access to information that we have. I'm going to get into that in my segment next about the how the Internet plays a role in this. But overall, I got to say, like, in one part of me is just like, yes, any group that is suffering deserves to be looked at and trying to figure out to help any mental health issues or any sort of community issues like solidarity, anything that they need. I get that. But in another sense, your Peterson clip just kind of nailed it for me because you have someone here who's out calling the left snowflakes all the time, but when it comes to his own emotions and his own crisis, all of a sudden it's all fine. And I just see this over and over again and it's really tiring to me.
- [26:01]
Julian Walker
So I want to close by suggesting that there are some other people and who knows, maybe they're already thinking of this, but it would be good to include some other voices in terms of what Sam, the kinds of insight Sam is trying to generate. So one of whom is FD signifier. And Derek, I know you're going to touch on him in a little bit. I would also suggest Josh Citarella, who is the host of the Doom scroll podcast. He has a background in researching and writing about Gen z for his 2018 book Politogram and the post Left, as well as his 2020 book, 20 Interviews, which is composed entirely of political interviews with Gen Z.
- [26:37]
Matthew Remsky
You know, Derek, I just want to speak to the comment that you made about how tiresome it is to be focusing on men sort of perennially over and over and over again. As I watch the footage come in from Los Angeles and I see how gender diverse those protests are, I get the sense, the old leftist sense of no war but class war. And there's a sense that I think that one of the things that Sam is doing is it's actually buying the terms of culture war discourse. It's actually saying, yeah, John Vervake, yeah, Jordan Peterson, men are really suffering. Let's figure out what's wrong with them. And I don't necessarily think that. I think men in that discourse is standing in for people who need to be listened to in general. And Julian, I would add to that list Matt Bernstein, Taylor Lorenz Hassan, Piker Olufemi Taiwo Kat Abu Zagala, who's running for Congress in Illinois, Francesco Fiorentini, the consultant list should be embedded. And part of my issue with this is I'm just wondering why they went public with this instead of getting people like this into a room for a week and to start their testing there. Because already the public nature of the question, what do American men think? Kind of knocks against the credibility. It makes them look like they're trying to culture war. Game the vote.
- [28:13]
Unknown
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- [28:48]
Kristen
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- [29:43]
Unknown
I want to open this segment with an anecdote that we can broaden out into a larger discussion. And that is, I simply cannot imagine being a teenager with immediate access to the Internet, much less the anxieties of social media. And I'll follow that with an immediate caveat, because I'm not in the tech is destroying our brains camp. My father started working with computers in the 1960s. I grew up with them. I very much like technologies. But these sorts of discussions quickly devolve into extremist arguments. And as with every technology, online networks are sometimes beneficial and sometimes horrific, and we have to navigate those spaces. So, back to my anecdote. I grew up 30 miles outside of New York City. The proximity certainly had influence, but it could have also been a planet away. And it wasn't until I started college and went to the city regularly that the cultural influences of New York hit me in real time. There wasn't this MTV lag until it trickled down into the suburbs, and that distance has been erased with the Internet. Everyone with a phone has instant access to anywhere in the world. And in one sense, that is absolutely amazing. In the sense more related to today's episode. Even with access to opinions, ideas, cultural influences from everywhere, people often seem to embed themselves into communities that confirm their own biases and are influenced by online networks that siphon them off into particular communities. To me, it doesn't appear to be an either or, but rather a both. And in preparation for this episode, I mentioned to you guys that a stark difference between the right and left, and I'm speaking extremely broadly here, is that the left often leads with a sort of purpose, a mission, and sometimes a moralizing tone. When I read this Sam pitch deck that you found, Matthew, it's filled with the sort of language that backs that up. So, for example, quote, by creating structured conversations in places that they are most comfortable that resonate with their lived experiences, we can ensure that outreach efforts are not just performative, but genuinely effective in mobilizing this critical demographic.
- [32:01]
Matthew Remsky
It was so bad that they leaked it. It was, why did they leak that? So stupid.
- [32:06]
Julian Walker
And the clue. The clue there is not just performative, like, actually, you just told on yourself, the whole thing is performative.
- [32:12]
Unknown
Right? Because that's not how people talk. And it is certainly not how young men talk. I understand that this is a big picture document. You know, last segment, I made my case. I understand that these things are necessary for, you know, for doing outreach and getting voters on your side. But they're missing something that Marshall McLuhan understood generations ago. The medium is the message. So when I read Sam's second objective, quote, authentic upstream cultural engagement, and that they'll, quote, identify and build trust with organic leaders in the largest relevant online communities in Discord slash Reddit and other online platforms, I feel like I'm watching an after school special about just saying no to drugs, which was created by people with no understanding of the target audience, their language, or drugs at all. To me, this is why Tim Walls calling JD Vance weird last year had such resonance. The dude is weird, and that is how people actually talk about him. It's how they feel about him. The Dems went with it for a minute, then they let it go, and they did not keep attacking on that level. And I get that people want to take a higher road, but instead we get this fucking $20 million pitch deck trying to figure out what Walls nailed because he was being actually authentic.
- [33:33]
Matthew Remsky
So we disagreed about this, and I now agree with you, Derek. And I think part of what's going on is that maybe the Dems let it go because he was more authentic than the party could actually be, because he interwove that comment with campaigning on his leftist legislative street credibility in Minnesota. These were victories on abortion rights, gender care, paid family and medical leave, labor rights, universal school meals, and he could not have. Just to be topical here for a moment. And tragic. He couldn't have pushed through any of those without the help of Melissa Hortman, speaker of the House, who was just assassinated alongside her husband by a new apostolic reformation ghoul.
- [34:11]
Unknown
And their dog.
- [34:12]
Matthew Remsky
And their dog. Yeah, So I didn't like that line at the time. We argued about it. I think maybe what was going on for me is that the party actually limited it to the weirdness of couches and Dolphins instead of J.D. vance is weird because he doesn't want kids to have free lunches or parents to have paid family leave. But, you know, that would have involved platform promises. Right. And that's. That's hard for this party.
- [34:37]
Julian Walker
Yeah, I mean, that's certainly part of it. But. But alongside the dolphins and couches stuff, there was conversation about, like, this guy's really weird in terms of how he focuses on women's reproductive freedoms on like. Like, what's going on, kids, etc, like why these weird preoccupations guy?
- [34:52]
Unknown
From my memory, a lot of late night talk shows really honed in on the couch part. Right. But yeah, when you actually saw some of the other people speaking in front of crowds, they did bring up a range of issues. But I also understand because you can't sort of separate how the media covers it with what's going on at this point, which is its own challenge. Right. And we are talking about a political party, but considering the left more broadly. I appreciate this video that you sent me, Julian. How. How did you find FD signifier?
- [35:23]
Julian Walker
Oh, gosh, I don't know. He's been popping up in my feed for a few months. So I guess thank the algorithm because I was watching stuff that was doing sort of cultural criticism and political content.
- [35:34]
Unknown
I think you sent into me first and then I started following. He is fantastic. He has like five YouTube channels. And the clip I'm using you had sent to me, it's from his signified B sides channel.
- [35:46]
Julian Walker
Yep.
- [35:47]
Unknown
This moment is from the video called the Manosphere is evolving. And well, listeners, you can decide how you feel about it.
- [35:54]
Derek Barris
And this is why I've never taken seriously the the left isn't doing enough for men argument. Because the reality is we're doing everything we can under the circumstances that are presented to us. What that means is there's only so much creators and commentators can do on their own when they are in fact going against the very grain of society. The normative attitudes and opinions that lead to red pill ideology have to be deconstructed from the ground up. And doing that with YouTube videos is not easy. And when you're trying to change people's baseline opinions on society and gender and relationships and all that, you're going to sound radical and outlandish even when you're not. And that's going to make it very difficult to not turn normal dudes off when you're trying to show them a better way. So it's not that people aren't trying, is that trying is not easy. And whenever I hear that excuse, I know it's coming from people who want to be coddled instead of taught to do better, who don't want their internal biases and misogyny and issues with women challenged, but want to somehow be accepted in or regarded as doing better with those problems when they haven't. Actually doing this type of work, this type of content requires us to be critical of things that a lot of people see as mundane and inoffensive. And that's just the road we're on.
- [37:10]
Julian Walker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel like he could be speaking directly to the Sam people and saying like, this is. Here's what's really going on here. And the reason he can do that is he's been creating this as kind of stuff that's critical of the manosphere for the last three years. And then prior to that, I believe he did his master's thesis on school shooters.
- [37:26]
Matthew Remsky
So he's in there and I really appreciate that. And he gets at something. He hints at something that I think is really important as well, is that as hard as it is, the resistance to really progressive messaging is that you have to hit back with the confidence of the opposite assumptions. Right. So I'm sure he does this, but you know, top tier communicators have to bring in this sense that, that, well, racism, sexism, homophobia, not fighting for women's reproductive rights, all of that is just insane. You know, it's almost. It's like the awakening rhetoric or tactics of some of the gurus that we've studied, but applied to a different realm because there's a rhetorical symmetry between, you know, the spiritual confrontation, like why don't you wake up even if it's delusional, and the political confrontation. So, you know, when I think of James Baldwin or Angela Javis or today contrapoints, if they're asked a question from the right or even the center about human rights or ways to protest the moral confidence that frames their answer with like, are you insane to ask me that? Do you really think the status quo is okay here? That's a charismatic moment. So there's something about the resistance that he's talking about that also I think provokes a kind of breakthrough communication for those who can grab it.
- [38:42]
Unknown
I also don't think the political party, but specifically the Democrats are going to be able to manufacture relationships with creators in the same way that the right has been able to do. And part of that comes from the fact that the Democratic Party is just a more diverse coalition there. There's diversity everywhere, but within the right there is a serious Christian nationalist base and there's a serious white person base. And you are going to be able to more easily find people who resonate with your messaging and then pay them to say what they already believe or you know, where the Democrats are going to have a harder time with that just because we are trying to welcome more people in. And that is, that is, as FD signifier says, challenging. There are plenty of left leaning creators doing the work. I think we've been trying in our own ways for a number of years. So whenever I hear about a Joe Rogan of the left, I just shake my head. And regardless how you feel about Rogan, the man has built a parasocial following over the course of decades, starting in 2009 on his podcast. But he's been in the atmosphere since the 90s. And the left does have a high level podcaster, Marc Maron, who's also been doing it just since 2009, a few months after Rogan started. And he engages people emotionally as well.
- [40:03]
Matthew Remsky
I think we are all going to sort of show our biases and date ourselves in, in, in a. In an episode like this because I love Marin, but does anyone under 30 listen to him?
- [40:15]
Julian Walker
Probably not.
- [40:16]
Matthew Remsky
I mean, with Marin particularly, there's the problem of leftist analysis originating from a depressive position. I mean, that's his thing. There's nothing depressive about Piker though, right?
- [40:28]
Julian Walker
Yeah. Yeah. So Hassan Piker, he has that, that energy, right?
- [40:32]
Unknown
He's.
- [40:32]
Julian Walker
He's doing it like a streamer and he's doing it like the guy he kind of mentored under but now has massive beef with, which is destiny. And we may disagree with some of destiny's, you know, not left enough positions, but he does the thing you're talking about, Matthew, where he's just putting it all out there. It's very immediate, it's very charism, it's very authentic. It's also very eloquent. He's got a lot of facts and figures at his fingertips. And I, to me, he's as close as we have to a Joe Rogan on the left right now.
- [40:57]
Unknown
Yes, Some people under 30 listen to Marin, but not a lot. So that's point taken there for sure. But that said, Marin is also around the same age as Rogan. So then you have to wonder, why is Rogan so much more influential when it comes to politics and also to the younger generation? My initial. Well, that's one. My initial thought with FD signifier said was that Rogan will coddle the audience more like not even intentionally. That's just his nature and that's how he engages with people. So there's more coddling and not as much challenging. And another key could be that Rogan makes a video podcast. Myron has always refused that format. He believes guests are more comfortable when a camera is off. That likely plays a role. But. But the right, as FD signifier says, plays to the base emotions of men. And in America, that's rooted in misogynistic chauvinistic, pseudo religious thinking. Because Rogan doesn't challenge his audience on that level and he agrees with most of his guests, that's going to draw people into that relationship. So when FD signifier says a lot of men don't want to be challenged, that speaks to me, to men broadly, than it does to specific media diets or political leanings. Individual men, one on one, can be fine, great even. But as a collective, our track record is shit.
- [42:20]
Julian Walker
Yeah, yeah. And then the other thing here is that trying to reverse engineer this kind of stuff, the way that they're describing and with their, like, with their consultant speak, it's probably almost impossible, especially when you're dealing with a podcast ecosystem that's essentially about comedians and actors and bro science influencers and then authors of fringe books about, like, cryptozoology and, you know, ancient, ancient architecture and stuff like that. They're all just coming in to shoot the shit and talk about a range of topics, and then they're going to issue super relatable, but often poorly informed hot takes on culture war and politics.
- [42:56]
Unknown
I do believe there are ways to help guide young men, even ways to make groups of men better people. Matthew, I know you wanted examples. You dropped a comment in I'm not being predictive on this episode.
- [43:07]
Matthew Remsky
No, you know why? Because I said it to you in a vm. You didn't answer it. I think you were maybe embarrassed, but I said you are a cool guy. I said you are in your early 50s. You've had a ton of different jobs, you float in and out of different social sets, you've lived in a bunch of different places, you're able to speak to a lot of different people, and you are a guy. And I think that even, you know, I think you've got something to say. I think you've got some ideas.
- [43:40]
Unknown
Matthew, I have one week left in my 40s, so thank you.
- [43:45]
Matthew Remsky
Oh, sorry. I just buried you. Sorry.
- [43:49]
Julian Walker
How dare you.
- [43:50]
Unknown
Yeah, I did hear the VM and I appreciated it, but I was dealing with some family stuff the day I got it. So. Anyway, that is why. But predictions are not my specialty. Except when it comes to RFK Jr absolutely. Decimating public health in America. I feel very comfortable making that. Yeah, back to this. When you're communicating in a medium whose messages are designed to exploit the most outrageous, perpetuating the worst qualities in men, you're starting off a few steps behind. So I'm just not convinced that spending tens of millions of dollars trying to study and create authenticity is going to help in that fight.
- [44:39]
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- [45:09]
What is dedication?
- [45:10]
The thing that drives me every day as a dad is Dariana. We call him Dayday for short. Every day he's hungry for something, whether it's attention, affection, knowledge. And there's this huge responsibility in making sure that when he's no longer under my wing that he's a good person. I want him to be able to sit back one day and go, we worked together. We did a good job.
- [45:30]
That's dedication.
- [45:32]
Matthew Remsky
Find out more@fatherhood.gov brought to you by.
- [45:34]
Unknown
The U.S. department of Health and Human.
- [45:36]
Matthew Remsky
Services and the Ad Council. I'm Nomi Fry.
- [45:38]
Derek Barris
I'm Vincent Cunningham.
- [45:40]
Matthew Remsky
I'm Alex Schwartz. And we are Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. Guys, what do we do on the show every week?
- [45:46]
Derek Barris
We look into the startling maw of our culture and try to figure something out.
- [45:49]
Matthew Remsky
That's right. We take something that's going on in the culture now. Maybe it's a movie, maybe it's a book, maybe it's just kind of a trend and we expand it across culture.
- [45:59]
Julian Walker
As kind of a pattern or a template.
- [46:01]
Matthew Remsky
Join us on Critics at Large from the New Yorker. New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow wherever you get your podcasts. Before I get to my thing, I just want to circle back to your generational comment that you opened with Derek. I think you're right that it is hard for us at our age to imagine what it's like to grow up digital. But I also want to say that we don't really have to imagine because tween and teen culture is a lot more accessible to the engaged parent and adult now than ever before. Like, my parents were engaged. They had no idea what I was reading, who I was talking to, where I was going. So today, not only can you see how kids are hanging around at school, but you can hear them on speakerphone. You can hear them on the multiplayer Gaming headset. The Netflix series Adolescence, which we covered, gave us this real sort of hand wringing sense of oh my God, what's happening in their bedrooms. And all I have to say of that is if the door was already closed, your problem wasn't the Internet. And what I've seen so far from hanging around with my son and his friends is that exposures to a wide range of cultures and affects are all available. That is true. And online clicks and cul de sacs conform and isolate kids. But I think that happens to the same extent that it happens in previously non supported environments where schools and parents support are overworked and you know, under resourced. You know, I think as you guys often say about psychedelics, the Internet for Gen Z is like a normalized, frictionless, non specific amplifier of what's going on and their, their larger social context is going to help craft that for them. Okay, so in thinking about all of this, I'm recalling some of my conversations with Craig Johnson, the author of how to talk to your son about fascism and Ben Case. You can find those on our feed. The most German points from Johnson were that fascism is appealing to the conditioned and conventional pleasures of young male life through its political imperatives. Speed, violence, recklessness, self assertion. So this is a politics that stokes or manufactures rage. This is all in the playbook of fascist leaders going back forever who have always needed street muscle and cannon fodder. I think these are the men, some of the men that the SAM Project is trying to sort of figure out and speak to. And these days they're also sort of provoked to into online aggression. And so they're praised for strength and violence and cruelty and they're told that these are political arts. And for the younger men, there are these easy tricks that, you know, fascist movements use, like irony poisoning, where, you know, racism and misogyny is couched in the plausible deniability of just joking until it's not a joke. Fascism punches down because it's easy. And I'm talking about everything from proud boy street violence to even Joe Rogan thinking it's cool to bring back the R word. And to be honest, I'm not sure which is more harmful to more people given the extent of his audience, as.
- [49:09]
Unknown
If he never ever stopped saying it in the first place.
- [49:12]
Matthew Remsky
Exactly. But for him to say that it is a cultural victory, that I can say retard again is like, it's really incredible, actually. I think that's, it's horrible. Yeah. And incredibly influential like a crazy across the country. Now that that word goes up in schoolyards everywhere. So the questions that Johnson left me with were, why isn't it obvious that right wing aggression isn't cool? Like, how do we make it uncool? How long does it take to realize that punching down is actually something that losers do? And that series of questions is a hundred miles down the road from what I think the SAM consultants are scratching the surface on. But I think that Taylor, Lorenz and Citorella would have a lot to say about, about that sort of thing. SAM wants to find out what drives young men to the right. And I think we're pretty much all agreeing that they're not going to do much with, you know, 10 tricks to make your TikTok go viral. They have to figure out what sorts of neglect and grievance drives people to want to act out and equalize. But if they really listen, I think the challenge in going to the party with a plan is going to be about whether the establishment can really sit with the anger and not dismiss and condescend, because we see that as a very ready sort of reflex. And this is like Bill Maher, I would say, spending 10 years laughing at social justice warriors to college administrators calling in riot police last spring. Like, because the overall message is you are angry, but you're also immature and stupid.
- [50:44]
Unknown
You don't know how the world works.
- [50:46]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, you don't know how the world works. Right. And to me, this is wrapped up in a deep question of parenting that I think many parents are familiar with, which is do you know, know how to understand and maybe even respect anger, even if it is immature, unseasoned, misdirected, and what kids are liable to do with it? What do you do when they rage at you? I mean, that's the, that's the basic question that I think the older elements, the geriatric elements of the Democratic caucus is dealing with every day. Like, what are we doing about these kids who are yelling about us? What do you do when the kids rage in at you? And do you have a good radar for when that rage can flip or be nudged into the kind of anger that drives justice movements, you know? Or are you going to be the kind of law and order parent who tells the kid to behave better and to go to therapy if they're struggling with their feelings? Like, you know, we hear you, we feel you, and then get back to business as usual? So in thinking about Johnson's proposition that what fascists really do with young men is that they, they co opt rage, I want to give a couple of snapshots, leftist passion and rage that I hope that Sam actually catches, because I think they present Democratic message makers with moments to study that also challenge this reflex to call the manager regardless of ideological differences in personal values. So I'm not like bringing these up to re litigate, like what should people do in protest or in rebellious context or anything like that. But how do you respond as a political party when you're trying to attract and not the greatest number of people. And the examples all here have to do with protest because I think that's a litmus test for the communications we have for people who are expressing deep commitment to their values or people who you want to be on your side. So first example, lots of hand wringing over punching Richard Spencer In 2017, lots of long form essays. And I think what happens is that can inflate the image of the establishment Democrat as the ruling parent rather than the guiding elder. And that discussion, you know, should he or shouldn't he or do we, you know, are we allowed to punch Nazis or not? Still hangs over a lot of the protest discourse today without a lot of analysis of what that actually that moment actually means, who Richard Spencer was, how he goes into decline over two years after that, that sort of thing. The second example comes from my conversation with Ben Case where I think he really sort of like showed me that fighting sport is not necessarily a right wing space. I think you guys just brought up ufc. A muscular left exists, it's not all male and it's not obsessed with humiliation. I'm thinking of, I don't know if you guys saw recently there was the Irish mma fighter Paddy McCorry who just pounded the shit out of this former IDF soldier Shuki Faraj winning his match with these elbow drops while shouting Free Palestine. And my sector of social media went wild over that. And regardless of what you feel about that particular issue, the question I think for the DNC is what do they learn about the prestige or the coolness of fighting for the underdog, for that part of the demographic that they're interested in in. And when I interviewed Ben Case, he listed off all these MMA clubs around the country that are specifically anti fascist, that welcome women in and LBGTQ people in for fighting classes. And then last, I'll just say that, like in this summer of illegal ICE raids, how will the Democrats respond to various protest tactics? If you're on Patreon, you'll find Julian and I arguing at length about all of the meanings, definitions and impacts of various forms of protest actions in relation to Ben Case's work and his. His study of Erica Chenoweth and so on. That argument will go on forever. I think there's good strategic points on all sides and if we disagree to. If we agree to disagree on values but limit the thinking to messaging. It's obvious that institutional figures in the Democratic Party can't openly endorse or encourage physical force pushing back against an increasingly fascist state. Even if we're talking about ICE agents who, who are coming in unmarked vans and they're not labeled and they might not even be ICE agents. But in my opinion, if any politician wants to stay relevant to a big chunk of Gen Z, I can't say how large it is, but I think it's influential. They should be mindful of crossing the line into calling the manager on the kids because I think the main thing that Gen Z wants to hear from anybody older is will you defend us? And to speak to this, I think there's a movement that came up with an interesting guiding principle. It was in Hong Kong over 2019 and 20, there were mass street protests about the government caving to Beijing or about to cave to Beijing on a number of issues related to deporting people directly to the homeland or to the mainland. Protesters developed a slogan which was do not split. And that was their strategy to maintain unity and resilience by valuing a diversity of tactics. They knew the were many. They knew that there were people committed to nonviolent action, that there were people willing to engage in more confrontational methods. By the way, some of those methods have trickled down into an operational knowledge that we see in LA and Portland. This is people protesting ICE in hard hats and gas masks with umbrellas against, you know, non lethal munitions and leaf blowers against tear gas. That all came from Hong Kong. Rather than criticizing or distancing themselves from each other other, the different factions provided mutual respect. And here's the most important thing, tacit support. They did not have to publicly endorse each other because they saw overt alliances perhaps as being counterproductive. Their belief was that we can support each other tacitly because we're all contributing to the overall strength of the movement. And part of the aim was to prevent infighting that authorities can exploit. They did not discipline each other. So. So I think that Hogue and Volpe and Allred may do okay with listening intently to young American men. I have no sense from their presentation that they're not earnest. Right? I think they actually do, especially from Volpe's like book or what I've seen of it. I think they do want to figure this out. But if they really pay attention to this thing that Johnson brings up, which is that it's rage that fascists are so good at capturing and weaponizing, if they really pay attention to that, I think they run the risk of presenting Democrats with actual challenges not to material policy. Not only to material policy, but also a challenge to this tendency of trying to always contain and manage and maybe ultimately co opt youth movements.
- [58:01]
Julian Walker
It's very interesting, Matthew. I mean, I agree with so much of what you've said and it also sounds like you're making an argument for. Sam would do well. This initiative through Democratic consultants would do well to listen to the enraged young voices on the left as a way of trying to solve this puzzle of why people are moving to the right across so many demographics and most notably amongst Gen Z men.
- [58:31]
Matthew Remsky
Well, if. Yeah, I mean. And are Gen Z men moving away from the Democrats because they're not represented by a Democratic Party that is not looking after their interests or are they really attracted to Trump? I can't answer that. I don't know.
- [58:49]
Julian Walker
Yeah, no, I think it's very interesting. I'm not trying to stick a stick a, you know, I'm not trying to put a stick in your bicycle wheels. I'm just, I'm just interested in how we think about this. Right. Because on the one hand I hear you saying, like Gen Z men are drawn to fascism because it's exciting, because it's about, it speaks to something in them that the speed and the intensity. Right.
- [59:14]
Matthew Remsky
Young men in general, that's Johnson's contention and that's been true historically. So if you have that as a sort of magnetizing promise of political action, the question is, if it emerges on the left, what are you going to do with it?
- [59:27]
Julian Walker
Yeah. So I almost hear you saying, and tell me if this sounds right, that what we need, what Democrats need, is to figure out how to harness some of that rage to have, I don't know, maybe equally intense and aggressive and maybe somewhat violent stuff on the left that appeals to young men in a similar way but with a different political message.
- [59:49]
Matthew Remsky
I think they have to more than anything else get out of the business of being mom and dad in the room saying, don't yell too loud. That's where I would leave it. Because as I said, nobody's going to advocate for confrontational tactics. But what I am really concerned about is the message that the suppressive parenting voice sends, which is you don't know how this works. You're going to fuck it all up if you do this action or that action.