Why #MeToo Generation Young Men Swung to Trump

Young men struggle with addiction, loneliness and suicide at skyrocketing rates, only to be dehumanized as oppressors by the dominant liberal culture.

This commentary was published in partnership with Unherd.

The days when most young voters, whether male or female, would reliably vote Democrat are over. Among the axiomatic election patterns smashed by Donald Trump, young men have swung to the Republicans by nearly 30%.

Cue the scorn. The Left-leaning press has derided the shift as merely the rise of “toxic masculinity” and the hatred of women’s rights. The New York Times described something even more sinister, calling it creeping “hegemonic masculinity.”

This reflexive contempt may unintentionally provide an explanation for the reversal. Many young men believe they live in a liberal-leaning society that actively despises them, treating them with disdain rather than empathy as their struggles have mounted.

Imagine an 18-year-old voter filling out his ballot for the first time. Looking back over his childhood and adolescence, this young man would feel his cohort are far from oppressors. Instead, they are drowning in problems.

He would have reached adolescence as the #MeToo movement took hold globally. The legitimate castigation of high-profile sexual abusers would rapidly devolve into widespread call-out culture, in which boys and young men were suspected of perpetuating the patriarchy and rape culture. The ordinary clumsiness of youthful love and teenage romantic inquiry was transformed overnight into behaviors that were liable for disciplinary action from school administrators.

The start of high school coincided with liberal bureaucrats locking schools down during the pandemic. Left with no other choices, the youth languished at home with online classes and virtual socializing that amounted to little more than doom scrolling. Last year, a study found that two-thirds of young men believed “no one really knows me” and one in three young men had spent no time with anyone outside their household in the prior week. Surveys show that the number of young men who say they lack a single close friend has soared fivefold since 1990.

As college approached, the women touted as the victims of society did not seem to be doing so poorly. The gap between college enrolment, which had been building for decades, exploded — 3.1 million more American women entered higher education than men by 2021. It’s not even just a yawning education disparity gap. In many American cities, young women are galloping ahead of men in terms of income.

And new vices seem to prey particularly among this crowd. The recent legalization of marijuana and online sports betting in many states has fuelled a skyrocketing rate of young men addicted to high potency pot and app-based gambling. Other more traditional compulsive habits, such as video games and pornography, similarly afflict young men far more than women.

Wasted time and lost savings, compounded by a profoundly lonely existence, can also give way to deaths of despair. The young male suicide is now 3.8 times that of young women, according to recent statistics. In some communities, the magnetic pull of nihilistic violence and gang crime has a particular allure.

In previous generations, young men yearning for transgressive content and open expression had plenty of safe options. There were endless sources of edgy magazines like VICE, or raunchy late-night comics poking fun at the double-standards and absurdities around us. That changed in less than a decade. VICE transformed into a liberal clickbait farm and then bankrupted itself as internal accusations of bigotry tore it apart, while comedians were canceled over “problematic” jokes.

The search for verboten ideas and thoughtcrime discussions has shifted almost entirely to places like Joe Rogan’s podcast. It is now among the most popular broadcasts of any type in the country. With over 11 million weekly listeners, the show is where young men go if they want to hear critical discussions with independent-minded thinkers.

Not long ago, Rogan’s show was embraced by outsiders of all types. Having previously hosted Bernie Sanders for a thoughtful discussion about political corruption, Rogan soon after endorsed the socialist’s 2020 bid for the presidency.

But the popularity of Rogan’s show angered the Left-leaning cultural order, which pushed to have him removed from Spotify and YouTube. Democratic politicians were warned to not appear over false claims that Rogan harbored racist views.

In this light, Kamala Harris’s refusal to appear on the show in the waning weeks of the campaign was more than a mere tactical mistake. It was an implicit endorsement of the cancellation campaign waged against Rogan — a dogwhistle for young men primed in the cancel culture wars.