Why Is the Right So Out of Touch With Young Men?

A fairminded analysis of a massive cultural disconnect.

(Credit for the voiceover for this article goes to the great Samuel Lipson)

When the MAGA movement re-entered the White House on the 20th of January last year, it did so with a kind of swagger that no other conservatives had enjoyed since the days of Ronald Reagan. While 21st century Republicans prior to the 2024 election had certainly been no slouches at the ballot box, almost all of their victories had felt hollow for one single reason: the consistent leftward lean of America’s young voters. While the treacherously low turnout rates and inefficient geographic distribution of the country’s youth meant that Republicans could still win off of the back of their hyper-engaged elderly base, simple math and biological reality dictated that such a strategy had a hard time limit. The idea that even the most stunning Republican victories were just the last gasps of a dying era was an eternal liberal consolation that left the GOP perpetually on the backfoot.

But in 2024, things changed. While Donald Trump didn’t outright win among Gen Z as a whole—contrary to what you may have heard, we were actually the most left-wing generation of them all that year—he did far better among the country’s youngest voters than any other Republican had in decades. And if you believe some exit polls, his massive gains were disproportionately large among particular one half of the Zoomer voting population: young men. For the first time in a generation, conservatism seemed to be a movement built for the future, with a cultural appeal finally capable of reaching beyond silver-haired Fox News watchers. And make no mistake: the right’s appeal among this demographic was assumed from the get-go to be fundamentally cultural. Before the election was even certified, almost everyone with a byline had come the exact same conclusion: that there was something fundamentally wrong with the left that made it ontologically incapable of appealing to young men. Between their #MeToos, #BlackLivesMatters and female presidential candidates, they had driven a historically liberal demographic straight into the arms of a proudly masculine right, which had succeeded in creating its very own cultural infrastructure off of fitness influencers and anti-feminist podcasters.

It was all far more of a condemnation than any sort of actual analysis—one that judged the left and its view of the world to be so fundamentally politically defective as to consign it to the dustbin of history. But while I might be something that almost none of these analysts are—an actual, honest-to-God, born-after-9/11 Zoomer—I’m not here to fundamentally dispute this view (at least, not yet). Instead, I will attempt to square their analysis with one of the biggest political stories we’ve seen since the 2024 election: the absolute collapse in support that Trump and his GOP have seen among young men over the past 12 months. According to Pew Research’s most recent national approval poll, men between the ages of 18-29—the same exact group that narrowly voted for Trump over Kamala Harris in 2024—now have a -35 net approval rating for his administration.

Some might look at such a massive swing and wonder if the analysis of the 2024 youth vote over the past year might have been far too culture-obsessed and fatalistic. Instead, I will hold true to the wisdom of all the millennials and Gen Xers who have decided that they already know all there is to know about my generation. I will look at the Trump 2.0 right in the same way that they have looked at the left, with a singular eye on what makes them so uniquely, fundamentally, unfixably repellent to young men like myself.

In a word: what is it that makes them so utterly disgusting and uncool?

Point I: Their Leading Politicians are Whiny, Weak, and Effeminate