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- [00:01]
A
I'm Kiana, and I leveled up my business with Shopify. Once I figured out that Shopify was a thing, I never turned back. I can create a site with my eyes closed. Shopify thinks ahead of us, you know, and it thinks about the customer more than anything. Every day I'm thinking about some other new business, but Shopify is doing it to me because it's so easy to use. It's like I can't stop. I'm addicted.
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B
Start your free trial@shopify.com Gen Z is officially the most ideologically extreme generation that we have seen in almost 100 years. Sometimes they're chopping off their body parts and they're trans. Sometimes they're Nazis. The most extreme among them are Nazis chopping their body parts off. But the numbers are in. They are extremely extreme, and no one seems to really appreciate why. There are a lot of theories about it. Some say it's affordability. It's because of the material conditions of their. Maybe a little bit of that. Oh, it's the darn TikTok. Or it's a little bit more of that. We will get to what is actually doing it. And then we will get to the medium, the artistic medium of our political moment, which we haven't covered before yet on this show. And that is the edit. We will get to the art of the edit. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.
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C
Welcome back to the show.
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B
It's wonderful to be with you. I'm not really with you, by the way. I'm only. I'm kind of secretly, virtually kind of almost with you because I, like many of you, am on a nice Fourth of July vacation.
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C
I don't do it.
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B
I'm not a huge vacation guy. But I'm not gonna look. I'll be back on Monday in the studio. But I couldn't leave you all the way. And actually, this really pertains to what we're talking about on the show today, which is what radicalized Gen Z and maybe what we can do about it. And we'll get into the political edit. But I'll be back. We'll be here on Monday. There's a lot more to say. First, though, go to TheCatholicHerald.com, promo code. Knowles. One of the many reasons I enjoy reading GK Chesterton is that he had an annoying habit of being right about things 100 years before everyone else figured them out. Well, who did Chesterton write for? Chesterton wrote for the Catholic Herald. That publication is still around. It's a tremendous publication in a media environment obsessed with the next outrage. I really appreciate and highly recommend a publication that has been thinking seriously about the church for 137 years. Every day we're told about the latest app, the latest trend, the latest social media controversy, that it's all the most important thing happening in the world. Meanwhile, institutions that have shaped civilization for centuries are often covered as though they're just another political interest group. The Catholic church is nearly 2000 years old. It's one of the most influential institutions in human history. If you actually want to understand what's happening in the church, why it matters, you need to take people. You need people rather, who take it seriously. Catholic Herald has been reporting on the life of the church since 1888. It's just phenomenal. It's a tremendous, tremendous organization. G.K. chesterton wrote for the Herald. Evelyn Waugh wrote for the Herald. Monsignor Ronald Knox wrote for the Herald. Even J.R.R. tolkien wrote letters to the editor, to the Herald. So right now, you can get 30 days of free access. Just you, just you and some of our friends. But this is a special thing. You go to TheCatholicHerald.com, use promo code knowleskenna wles at checkout. Don't forget the the TheCatholicHerald.com, promo code knowleskenna w dash for 30 days of free access. The extremism of Gen Z, I think that is totally without any kind of debate, right? I think everybody basically agrees with that. You got a massive rise in the LGBTQ ideology. NBC reported a couple years ago that 30% of Zoomers identify as LGBTQ, LMNOP QRS TV. But that's very much in flux because it's all fake. But that number has come down a little bit. Nevertheless, you see a lot of sexual radicalism and you see a lot of radicalism. Even on the right. The zoomers are much more likely to be Nazis than previous generations. And this is not just anecdot. You can see it come up in different reports. Here's one. Here's one study. Fourteen and a half percent of Gen Z respondents in a 2024 national survey describe themselves as ideologically extreme. This is compared to 2.7% of millennials. So the zoomers are many multiples more likely to call their ideology extreme than than the millennials. And the millennials were pretty annoying, too. As a millennial myself, having lived through the rise of millennials, the political coming of age of millennials, that was really the Obama generation. And they were much more ideological than Gen X, the generation that comes immediately before us. Gen X is not ideological at all. That's the grunge generation checked out. They just kind of keep to themselves, do their own thing. No one talks about them. The boomers obviously were much more ideological, but the zoomers really put all of them to shame. And then there are real practical effects to this. It's not just like edgy commentary. According to Harvard Youth Poll, a relatively recent one shows that 39% say that political violence is acceptable under at least one circumstance. 28% when government violates rights, 12% for fraudulent elections, 11% when someone persists and promotes extremist beliefs. That 11% is really just the libs, the young libs justifying killing ordinary conservatives cause they're promoting extremist beliefs. 10% of them show high acceptance of political violence. Obviously, we don't need survey data to show that this happened because we saw it all happen after the killing of Charlie Kirk.
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D
One more.
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B
I won't belabor the point on the numbers too much, but just one more. Pretty damning statistic. Nearly half of zoomers find it acceptable to forcibly occupy public buildings or kill or physically harm elected officials. Nearly half. That's compared to just 20% of millennials. So it has skyrocketed since the millennials in just one generation. So what's doing it? I think on the left, what they're gonna tell you is the reason this is happening is because material conditions have declined. It was easier for our grandparents or our great grandparents to buy homes than it was for young people to buy homes. Which is true. You have to grade it on a curve a little bit, because homes now are just much bigger and nicer. But that doesn't matter. That's soft consolation to a Zoomer in his 20s who can't afford to. You say, well, fine, I'll buy a cheaper house, but there aren't any cheaper houses to buy. You add on top of that that you have Haitians who are here with temporary protected status. They were supposed to leave the country in the middle of 2011. I guess it was. They came here in 2010. They were supposed to leave in the middle of 2011. They're still here today. President Trump is trying to remove them. The Supreme Court finally said that, I guess, sort of, maybe they can. Those Haitians here temporarily are more likely to own homes than zoomers in their 20s. So I get it. There's material problems that especially hit zoomers. Hits everybody, but especially hits zoomers. The country has decayed there's less trust in the institutions. The institutions lie to us. I think a lot of zoomers got radicalized during COVID when their schooling was taken away from them, when their proms were taken away from them, when college was taken away from them in some cases. So there's that. But that's not the main driver. It's not the main driver. Some people want to blame social media. That's, I think, closer to it. But it's not even just social media. It's the Internet and the way that we live. And the obvious expert on this that we have to go back to is the very famous, now somewhat forgotten theorist of communication, Marshall McLuhan. Marshall McLuhan has this famous maxim, the medium is the message. This has now become a cliche, but it's a keen observation. The medium is the message. Whenever we're talking about what these kids are consuming, we're always talking about the content. All the stupid debates over banning TikTok focused on the types of commentary that you would get on TikTok. They say this is anti American. This is pushing Chinese propaganda. This is sexually lewd. This is this. This is that. That misses 70% of the point, cuz for McLuhan. And it's not just that the message is the message. It's that the medium is the message. The big problem with TikTok really is not any particular reel that you're watching there. It's TikTok. It's that it's frying our brains and killing our attention spans. And we're staring at it all the time, bumping into trees. That's the problem with TikTok. In other words, the problem is the medium. And a basic way to understand how the medium is the message is think about when TV comes out. When TV comes out, you get I Love Lucy, you get the nightly news, you get some sports, you get all the content. But it also means that people are staying up later. It also means that now electronic light is even more present in homes. It now means that people are falling asleep to this content. It now means that social events are gonna involve all coming together and not playing cards and not talking and not going bowling, but you're just gonna sit together silently and watch something. In other words, the medium itself changes human behavior. It changes the way that we think about ourselves. It changes the way we think about politics. And so, in so doing, it itself is much more powerful than whatever messages you're getting from I Love Lucy that is obviously exaggerated. It goes to accelerated when you talk about The Internet combined with mobile devices, which is where it really kicks off. Millennials grew up mostly on the Internet. I remember when we got our first computer. I remember when we got the Internet, I was pretty young, I was five or six years old. And some of my richer friends got it much, much earlier than that. But it's really marrying that with the mobile device, such that now you're just constantly getting that dopamine hit, you're constantly getting shorter and edgier commentary, because the Internet then broke down the monopolies of the news networks and the entertainment networks. All of a sudden you get all these independent creators. But the incentives for independent creat are totally different from the incentives of people who are on networks. I've talked about this a lot with politics and how it affects the way the podcasters and the streamers are changing. GOP politics or not. The differences are when you have a news network, say you have Fox News, some people are gonna be a little more edgy, some people are gonna be a little more mainstream, some people are gonna be a little more liberal even. But they all have to be kind of cohesive within a network. And there are rules regulated in part by the government, in part by the shareholders of News Corporation. And so it's. It keeps guardrails around what is going to be said when you get to independent media, not only do you lose all of those guardrails, you get the exact opposite incentives, because now the incentives are constantly to be getting more attention from everyone else. Now all of a sudden, you're not on a team with anybody. You're competing against everybody. It's a war of all against all. And the currency is eyeballs and attention. The way to get the eyeballs and attention is to be more extreme, especially as political content becomes prominent. You have to be more extreme in your beliefs. I was talking to a pal of mine who observed that the moment that political media reached its end limit, and it can never go any further in its present form, was when Kanye went on the Alex Jones show in the mask with the bottle of Yoo Hoo and the flyswatter and said, I love Hitler. There is not. You can't go any further. There is nothing. You have now violated the mythology, the kind of religion that comes about in the 20th century to replace traditional religion, especially Christianity. Where there's no devil, there are no gods, there's nothing supernatural, nothing's enchanted, there's only raw history. And there's not the incarnation of perfect good, there's only the incarnation of evil. So it flips Christianity on its head. And who's the worst guy from the 20th century? It's Hitler. So Hitler becomes this figure who is even more evil than Hitler. And Hitler is a very nasty fellow, but he becomes this absolute incarnation in the imagination of pure evil. Not evil as a deprivation of good, or sorry, not good as a deprivation of evil, but evil as a deprivation of good. And so the most extreme thing you can possibly say is I love Hitler. In that kind of crazy environment, it can't go any further than that. Which means that there's a new kind of as the medium transforms how we think about politics, that too is gonna shape the medium itself. And this has led us to the art form, the pure art form of politics in the year of our Lord 2026. That is the edit. And we don't. The edit is like a zoomer thing. The edit is not a millennial thing or a Gen X thing. So I have just been given a banquet. I like the edits. I have been given this absolute feast of political edits to bring my McLuhan infused media expertise and to savor on this Fourth of July week. There's a lot more to say. First though, go to Hillsdale Edu Knowles K N A W L E S the modern world changes fast. Human nature does not. That is why the great books still matter and why John Milton's Paradise Lost has helped readers understand timeless questions about temptation, freedom, truth, rebellion, and man's relationship with God for centuries. Drawing the epic tradition of Homer Milton created a Christian epic that stands as one of the greatest works in the Western canon. Through Hillsdale College's free online courses, you can study these works with real Hillsdale professors. Paradise Lost rewards serious readers. Milton was not writing entertainment. He was writing a response to Homer, to scripture, to the whole weight of the Western tradition, and asking whether fallen man could find his way back to God. Most people have never engaged with it. Seriously, it helps to have a teacher. Hillsdale's free course is a rare opportunity to do that, guided by professors who really know the material. In this course, Professor Stephen Smith guides him through the depths of hell to the heights of heaven through one of the greatest works of Christian literature ever written. Right now, go to Hillsdale Edu Knowles to enroll. It's totally free. Read deeply, think clearly. Start right now at Hillsdale. Edu Knowles.
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C
Political campaigns used to be won and lost by radio ads, then TV ads, then it became podcasts. And now we have arrived at the most powerful political art form of our time. The edit.
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B
The edit, the producers have compiled the
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C
very tippity top gen Z right wing political edits. Take it away.
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E
But it's all right. I'll get another one in London.
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F
London? Is that your village?
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G
Yes.
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E
It's a very big village.
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F
What's it like?
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E
Well, it's got streets filled with characters, bridges over the rivers and buildings as tall as trees.
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F
I'd like to see those things.
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E
You will.
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F
How?
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E
We're going to build them here. We'll show your people how to use this land properly, how to make the most of it.
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F
Make the most of it?
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E
Yes. We'll build roads and decent houses.
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F
And our houses are fine.
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E
You think that only because you don't know any better. There's so much we can teach you. We've improved the lives of savages all over the world.
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F
Savages.
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C
It goes hard. Except I don't like how long the intro was.
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B
The intro was boring to me.
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C
I remember when Pocahontas came out.
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B
It's been 84 years.
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C
The whole point of the edit is that it just plays on the ever diminishing attention span of modern people, especially younger people. So you just have to have the rapid sound and the constantly changing pictures. You know, you can't. You can't have like a 15 minute intro. So that was. That was weak. I get the setup. But they should have done the setup in like four seconds. Okay, next one.
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D
But the Illuminati aren't just represented by pyramids. They're also represented by an eye. What do eyes do they see just like the Mediterranean Sea or Syria, or like we mentioned earlier, the Red Sea. That's our second triangle, the triangle of eyes. When you put the triangle of pyramids and the triangle of eyes together. Together, what do you get? Two triangle. Stars. And what country lies in the middle of the star?
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H
Israel.
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D
And guess what Israel's national flag looks like. Exactly.
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C
It's pretty funny because a lot of the edits I've noticed they do tend a little touch toward Nazism, which kind of makes sense because it's just the hyper concentrated form of political media. So it's gotta have the most kind of edgy, extreme thing. Like, you know, it's not gonna be about marginal tax rates. So I get that. The thing I can't tell with that edit though is is it. Is it ironic or not? It's very hard to tell the difference between the real schizos and the guys just having some fun.
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F
Say something.
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E
What do you say to a tree?
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A
Anything you want.
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C
I don't know. And then it brought in UFOs and all that. It's kind of making me think though, this idea that you can't have, like normie edits, it's gotta be just really concentrated radical extremes. What if we should just start doing normie edits like, you know, like Mitt Romney calling for a slightly lower corporate tax rate. Then it's just like, it's like Himmler shows up, you know, or whatever, like, you know, Genghis Khan. But it's just Romney wanting to save corporations a little bit of money by
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H
lowering those marginal rates. We help businesses that pay at the individual tax rate to have more money so they can hire more people and pay higher wages. My plan is to lower it by 20% and put more people back, back to work.
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C
Someone should do that. Someone should make that. Okay.
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B
Next one.
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I
President Trump looked at the Taliban leader and said this. I want to leave Afghanistan, but it's going to be a conditions based withdrawal. And translator translated and he said, if you harm a hair on a single American, I'm going to kill you. And translator goes, Trump goes, tell him what I said. Reached in his pocket, pulled out a satellite photo of the leader of the Taliban's home and handed it to him.
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D
Shut up.
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I
Send out to every.
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C
Now the the story. The problem with this edit is the story is better than the actual, like images and music.
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B
There are like a billion iconic images of Trump. Why?
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C
It's just that was just the same, like two shots from the same event,
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B
just back and forth. So that was very low effort on the edit itself, but the story was really good, so it deserved a better
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C
montage at the end. Next one.
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B
There's a lot more to say. First, though, go to takelean.com, enter code knowles K W L E S this episode is sponsored by Brickhouse Nutrition. You've probably heard about those weight loss injections that everyone is talking about, and for good reason. The results can be pretty incredible. They work by helping regulate blood sugar and keeping your appetite in check. Plus, with summer swimsuit season right around the corner, everyone wants to show off. But here's the thing. Not everyone wants to deal with weekly injections, especially when you start hearing about some of the side effects that can come with them. That's where Lean comes in. It's a weight loss supplement developed by doctors, and people are seeing some really, really impressive results. The ingredients in Lean are backed by research showing they can help lower blood sugar, turn stored fat into energy, and reduce those constant cravings and hunger pangs that make dieting so hard. One important thing to know. Lean is not just designed for someone who wants to drop a couple of pounds. The doctors at Brickhouse Nutrition specifically formulated it for people who have been struggling to lose 10 pounds or more and are ready for something that actually works. Multiple producers and employees at Daily Wire have tried Lean. They are looking sexier than ever. They've already been very, very impressed with how effective it is this summer. Look your best. Let's get you started with 20% off and free rush shipping so you can add Lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. That's takelean.com Enter code knowles for your discount promo code knowles@takelean.com well, you sound like a Democrat. I'm not retarded.
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C
Simple. I love it. I love it. Nice to the point. Not overcomplicated, not. It's not a five minute meme. It's just hot chick says Democrats are done. I can understand that. Very simply I get. And then you leave the audience wanting more. So like seven seconds.
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B
That was great.
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C
Next one.
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G
I am European and I am proud. I am proud of our unparalleled history, culture and diversity. I am proud of what we have achieved as a civilization. But Europe as we know it, in all its richness and greatness is under threat by a false representation of our history, present and future. We are being told lies about who we were, who we are and who we should be. And those lies need to be challenged.
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C
I was just about to do the hand Jack. It was great, Eva, you know, very, very compelling spokesman for right wing Europeanness.
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B
And it was good.
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C
It was sort of seductive enough without being
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B
untoward.
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C
It was edgy enough without being, you know, sort of radical and pushing off the normies. It was nice. It was very, very well done.
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B
Very compelling.
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C
Obviously a beautiful edit overall. Next one.
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B
I thought I saw where the was going.
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I
Wow.
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B
Extremely compelling.
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C
I'm not being ironic, it's like it. That's very good political propaganda because it doesn't, it doesn't make any claims. It just connects a bunch of things. Like 9, 11. It just sort of implicitly blames on the Jews, like lets the Muslims off the hook and implicitly blames them on the Jews without ever really claiming that. And then connects the Star of David
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B
to the Freemasons, even though the Freemasons
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C
I don't think allowed Jews in, which
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B
is why the Jews created their own
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C
Freemasons called B' Nai Brith, in my limited understanding of Freemasonry and Judaism. And then connects it to like Saturn. So there's kind of cosmic sense of it. And then the contrast with Christianity, it's
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B
very, very good political propaganda because it
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C
makes you feel something. It, like, plays on antipathies and attraction and desire without ever having to make a claim or defend a claim. Not. Yeah, you're gonna.
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B
Whoever made it, they probably have some problems with their ideology, we might have to say.
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C
But very, very talented at propaganda. Was it naughty? Naughty, like K, N, O T T Y or N A U, G, A, like, like. Yeah, okay. Okay. That's not surprising. Yeah, I remember. This is, like, months ago. Brett Cooper texted me and said I hadn't talked to her in a while. And she said, hey, Michael, I just wanted to call your attention. There are apparently Thirst Trap edits of you on TikTok. And then I was somewhere, like, someone, a stranger came up to me and mentioned this in public, which is great, and I encourage more of them. I'm Michael Noel. See you next time.
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B
My brain is fried. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. See you later.