By Caroline Downey
Thursday, March 12, 2026
Dear young men: No, the Jews are not to blame for your
problems.
The so-called groypers — those who believe that Israel is
a manipulative puppet master that pulls America’s strings to advantage itself
at our expense — continue to make inroads with the male youth of the Republican
Party. It’s not just an online phenomenon. At the antisemitism symposium hosted by National Review and
the Republican Jewish Coalition on Tuesday, I noted that the College
Republicans of America, an organization that has over 300 chapters nationwide,
just appointed a groyper as its new political director. That a Nick Fuentes
stan was tapped for the role suggests that the conspiratorial thinking about
the Jewish state and its people is not confined to X.
As PragerU influencer Shabbos Kestenbaum mentioned on our
panel, the anxiety about the future that is shaping groyper-esque
sentiment among Gen Z — whether it’s being priced out of the real estate market
or struggling to afford health care — is real. The problem is that they’re
misidentifying the culprit.
“They’re saying the reason you can’t get ahead in life,
the reason you can’t leave your mom’s basement, the reason you won’t have a
successful relationship, the reason you keep working two to three jobs is
‘something something the Jews’ and ‘something something Bill Ackman’ and
‘something something AIPAC’ and ‘something something Bibi,’” Kestenbaum said.
And a growing number of young people, not just on the
left but also on the right, are falling for it hook, line, and sinker. The
groypers like to hide behind a banner of “America First,” as though they are
the arbiters of what’s truly American. You see, they just want to shut down the
border, deport illegal aliens, stop sending money abroad, and focus on American
domestic prosperity!
I think the Founding Fathers gave us a pretty good idea
of what America means, and anti-Jewish bigotry was not
included in that vision. Further, the groypers’ villainizing of the Jews,
as Kestenbaum suggested, is simply lazy, illogical, and a losing argument in
dire need of refuting.
To suggest that success is impossible in America because
of a Jewish cabal distorts not only the truth but our very understanding of
meritocracy in this country. America offers abundant opportunities. Some people
do well because they’re in the right place at the right time, but getting ahead
is still largely a function of grit, patience, and determination.
There’s no small amount of self-interest at play here as
well for influencers fanning the flames. If I, as a traditional conservative,
declared on X tomorrow that it was the Jews all along, I would go viral and
probably gain many thousands of followers. If I kept up that drumbeat, there’s
a good chance that at some point I’d have a large audience for a new show and
would be rolling in revenue.
The fact is that social media increasingly seems to
reward transgressive, shock-and-awe content. And the oldest hatred in the book,
once taboo in American life after the horrors of the mid-20th century, fits the
bill perfectly. Grifters hungry for fame and fortune are going to continue to
capitalize on the anti-Israel narrative.
That is, unless influencers and others in the public
square band together and vow to put this to bed for good. This is a herculean
task because, as my co-panelist and Daily Wire contributor Gates Garcia
said, “we’re fighting the algorithm.” It’s hard to compete with
hyperstimulating rage bait that’s designed to prey on your fears about the
future and sidestep your critical thinking. But it’s a crucial task, and one
that should be taken up by anyone who truly cares about this generation of
young men.
Groypers are looking for an easy answer that can explain
it all. But as with most things in life, it’s not that simple. Many factors
have converged to make life harder for young people. Government meddling in
various industries, especially housing and health care, have exacerbated the
affordability issue — though Democrats want to prescribe more of the same.
Radical feminism obviously overcorrected for women’s lack of freedom in
society, and one result has been to punish many young men in college (DEI, Obama
Title IX witch hunts) and to turn women away from relationships and family,
things that young men still greatly desire.
But speaking as a Gen Z woman with two Gen Z brothers, I
believe that young men deep down don’t actually want politicians to grovel to
them. They need tough love and to be told that they are the masters of their
own destiny, and that’s because they were so lucky to be born in the freest,
greatest country in the world.
Maybe I feel differently than my peers because I was in
the special situation of having much older parents, one born in 1940 and
another in 1955, who both achieved great careers after starting from nothing
and who instilled in me the importance of hustling and persistence amid
adversity. I feel sorry for young people who never got such a humbling view of
American history and its major challenges over the decades.
Gen Z’s criticisms of Baby Boomers are fair only in the
sense that they cashed in on progressive government’s interventions in housing
(as any rational actor would), which turned it from a necessity into a
speculative and lucrative asset class. Gen Z is bitter that they won’t be able
to build equity quite as easily because of the high barrier to entry. Fine. But
older generations dealt with hardship, too, whether it was trying to get a job
during Jimmy Carter’s stagflation in the 1970s, as my mother did, or getting
deployed to fight in Vietnam, as my dad was.
“Make something of yourself; don’t fall into this pit of
despair,” was Kestenbaum’s message to young men, and I agree.
Young men feel bad for themselves right now, and no doubt
there have been forces working against them for decades. But there is no
Israeli/Jewish bogeyman. They need to resist the edgelord escapism and remember
the uplifting wisdom of Charlie Kirk, who didn’t entertain this doomer
ideology. “Get married. Have children. Build a legacy. Pass down your values.
Pursue the eternal. Seek true joy.”
No comments:
Post a Comment