The Rightward Rebellion: Why Young Men Are Flocking to Conservatism

Young men once occupied a special — even unique — place in the West. Alexander the Great was 20 years old when he became king of Macedonia, and 25 when he conquered the Persian Empire; by the age of 30, he had brought most of the known world to heel. Augustus was 17 when he inherited Julius Caesar’s will; Charlemagne was 24 when he became the undisputed king of the Franks; and Napoleon was 24 when he became a general in the French army. On July 4, 1776, James Madison was 25; Alexander Hamilton was 21; and James Monroe was just 18. Christ himself was estimated to be roughly 30 — not young, per se, but hardly old, either — when he began his ministry.

The West’s greatest achievements were secured by men in the prime of their lives who were eager for glory, ready to die for immortality, and determined to write their names in the annals of their people’s history. From the early Viking raiders who sailed westward to explore and conquer alien worlds, to the European kings who struggled to unite and forge nations, to the Christian missionaries and explorers who crossed oceans to bring their God to new lands, Western Man’s undying thirst for new frontiers drove his civilization onward to destiny. They were the dreamers, poets, artists, statesmen, priests, philosophers, soldiers, and kings whose restless and irrepressible desire to know, explore, create, and conquer painted a civilization upon the empty canvas of primordial Europe. It was young Western men who poured out from the shores of their respective kingdoms to conquer continents, build a global empire, and give birth to the modern world.

For what young men gave to the West, the West gave back to them in kind. Youthful masculinity was afforded a certain kind of poetic glory in the West. But today, it is precisely what all of modern American — and more broadly, Western — society seems dedicated to punishing. The very virtues that were once celebrated and idolized by the bards and poets are now depicted as vices by the modern social and cultural regime. The very structure of American life appears, at times, to be organized around suppressing the same distinct ethos that originally shaped it.

In practice, this manifests as both an attack on young men specifically and an attack on masculinity in general — not just on the “gender norms” we hear about incessantly today, but on the masculine virtues and ways of viewing and interacting with the world. The phenomenon goes by many names, but perhaps the most popular descriptor, at least on the younger and more internet–savvy end of the Right, is “The Longhouse” — a term that “refers,” as the pseudonymous writer L0m3z put it in First Things, “to the remarkable overcorrection of the last two generations toward social norms centering feminine needs and feminine methods for controlling, directing, and modeling behavior.” Lomez writes:

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the realm of free speech and the tenor of our public discourse where consensus and the prohibition on “offense” and “harm” take precedence over truth. To claim that a biological man is a man, even in the context of a joke, cannot be tolerated. Instead, our speech norms demand “affirmation.” We are expected to indulge with theatrical zealotry the preferences, however bizarre, of the never-ending scroll of victim groups whose pathologies are above criticism.… Further, these speech norms are enforced through punitive measures typical of female-dominated groups –– social isolation, reputational harm, indirect and hidden force.

The emasculation of American life is both a literal process — whereby women are increasingly replacing men in traditionally male-dominated positions of power — and a more abstract, but no less potent, transformation, wherein feminine tastes, attitudes, and behavioral norms and expectations are replacing their masculine predecessors. As Lomez notes, “The Longhouse distrusts overt ambition. It censures the drive to assert oneself on the world, to strike out for conquest and expansion. Male competition and the hierarchies that drive it are unwelcome. Even constructive expressions of these instincts are deemed toxic, patriarchal, or even racist.”

It is no coincidence, then, that political and ideological polarization among young people is increasingly splitting across gendered lines. “The Left,” broadly construed, is the party of the insiders — corporate managers, government bureaucrats, academic administrators, Big Tech C-suites, NGOs, and foundations, and so on. “The Right,” broadly construed, is the party of the outsiders — the Americans who, as a result of their geographic location, economic status, occupation, demographic characteristics, religious worldview, and sociological background are most alienated from the centers of social, cultural, and political power in modern America. The insiders represent, defend, and benefit from the new system; the outsiders resent and are disenfranchised by it.

The result is that, by many measures, gender-based ideological polarization within Generation Z is more pronounced than at any other time in recent memory. A University of Michigan survey tracking the political views of twelfth-grade boys and girls dating back to the 1970s found a sharp and drastic divergence to the right among young men starting around 2015 — and a sharp and drastic divergence to the left among young women around the same time. “Twelfth-grade boys are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative versus liberal, according to [the] respected federal survey of American youth,” the Hill wrote. At the same time, “women ages 18 to 29 are more likely to identify as liberal now than at any time in the past two decades, according to Gallup surveys. Young women are almost twice as likely as young men to claim the liberal tag.” A major global survey written up in Reuters back in April found that young American men were “the only U.S. population group to turn more conservative over the past decade.”

A slate of other polls, surveys, and studies published over the past few years tell the same story. According to Gallup, the share of young men who identify as Republican has increased by double digits over the past decade. According to a Wall Street Journal poll published in late July, the majority of young men (ages 18–29) now support Trump — a 29-point swing from 2020. Young women, on the other hand, supported Biden over Trump by a whopping 30-point margin. (For context, the gender gap between young men and young women was only 5 points in the 2008 presidential election).

The trend extends to specific issue-based positions: On everything from a border wall to gender identity to abortion to tax cuts, the Journal poll found that young men sit to the right of young women by double-digit margins. On “abortion should be legal,” the gap between young men and women is 37 points; on “let kids pick their gender identity,” the gap is 35 points; on both “build the wall” and “extend the Trump tax cuts beyond 2025,” the gap is an astounding 43 points.

What’s particularly notable is that by at least some measures, the rightward shift appears to be accelerating at the younger end of the spectrum: According to PRRI’s annual poll of Generation Z — which helpfully breaks down results between “Gen Z adults” (ages 18–25) and “Gen Z teens” (ages 13–17) — younger Gen Z boys are 25 points more likely, on net, to identify as conservative over liberal than their older Gen Z counterparts.

The significance of the rightward shift among young men is evident in the fact that it extends beyond the relatively small cohort of highly politically engaged or active constituencies. Youth male culture today is often either implicitly or explicitly right-wing. This is visible in the most popular and well-known influencers among boys — Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, and so on. This is the true measure of the political culture in a particular demographic: Even for the apolitical members of the group, the environmental backdrop — the podcasts they listen to, the figures they idolize, the topics of discussion with their friends and broader social circle — is either right-wing or right-wing–coded.

This divergence isn’t just happening in America; it’s taking place across the developed world. “In the US, Gallup data shows that after decades where the sexes were each spread roughly equally across liberal and conservative world views, women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male contemporaries. That gap took just six years to open up,” the Financial Times reported earlier this year. But the precisely same phenomenon is occurring in Germany (which has a 30-point gap), the United Kingdom (which has a 25-point gap), and any number of other developed nations. An Ipsos survey of male and female “Zoomers” across 26 countries, published earlier this year, found consistent double-digit gaps between young men and women on issues like same-sex marriage.

What all this means for America — and for the Right’s place within it — remains unclear. The genre of rightism emanating from the alienated, disenfranchised young male masses is certain to be distinct from the movement conservatism of the past few decades. It will be angrier, more militant, and organized largely around an emerging set of issues that are often described as the “culture war.” In reality, these issues are merely different battlefields in the far more fundamental war surrounding the most essential questions of American identity. Young men know, at a visceral level, what defeat in this war would mean. They understand, better than many of their older counterparts, the stakes. They are the Right’s natural allies — if the Right is willing to embrace them.

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