Colin Berg (#1: What was, what is, and what can be done?)

(The New School)

As a MA student in the NSSR’s Historical Studies program, I was initially intimidated to speak among such accomplished scholars, but Professor Morina encouraged me that my young perspective is essential. I can hopefully bring something new to the table by focusing on my age and gender demographic. I will address a few sociological factors behind young men’s recent shift towards right-wing populism.

This development adds another parallel between the backsliding of the Weimar Republic and American democracy today. To address “what was,” I will touch on the experiences of the “Front Generation” in post-World War I Germany, who experienced disillusionment, loneliness, and rootlessness when they returned home after defeat and the brutality of mechanized warfare. Alienated from the new liberal world order, many veterans longed for hierarchy, dominance, shared identity, and belonging. The Nazi Party exploited these longings by recruiting veterans crowding the beer halls of Munich into the paramilitary organization of the SA and by recruiting students into youth organizations, student clubs, and sports clubs.

According to a recent poll conducted by AP News, about 6 in 10 men under 30 voted for Trump in the 2024 election. This was a huge swing, and arguably one of the key reasons why Trump won. Young men today experience similar feelings of disorientation to those of the Weimar Republic, even though digitalization and AI produce new threats to human connectivity and social stability.

Gen Z is the first generation of voters to have come of age in the absence of traditional sources of information: network television and print journalism. If you want to understand the worldview of young men, you need to be on YouTube, a rugged terrain that breeds extremism, given its loose ethical and journalistic standards. This frontier has provided space for what many call the “manosphere’ which serves as the pipeline to radicalization. Nearly all young men can attest to the experience of YouTube algorithm recommending them videos of Joe Rogan, Theo Von, Andrew Schulz, and Lex Fridman. These libertarian voices are not ideologues themselves. Yet under the guise of open-mindedness, they platform fascism, inviting racist reactionaries such as Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Gavin McInnes, Nick Fuentes, and Elon Musk.

The manosphere first draws its audience into this pipeline by providing a sense of community. The shared experience of watching, engaging, and commenting on videos creates the illusion of belonging. Many of the bro influencers communicate intimacy through symbolism and imagery. Carlon has rebranded himself as a Jacksonian “man of the people,” situating his interviews in the rugged cabin home. Rogan charms with its college-dorm aesthetic, the American flag hanging behind him, beer cans and joints covering his desk, and the famous red curtain behind each guest.

Trump recovered from his poor debate performance in the late fall by prioritizing the manosphere over legacy media, taking interviews with Andrew Schulz, the Nelk Boys, Lex Fridman, Joe Rogan, and Theo Von. Meanwhile, Harris turned down Rogan. The best she could do was a scripted interview on the Shannon Sharpe Podcast, where her team repeatedly requested questions in advance. Trump’s answers on these podcasts were not only unscripted but personable, funny, chaotic, and unpredictable. He bragged to Schultz that his off-topic ramblings are part of his genius rhetoric style called the “weave.”

Trump is partially right in that the Democratic establishment has foolishly dismissed the “weave.” The old guard’s outdated axioms about proper communication signify to young men a dismissal of the conversational style of the podcasts that are not only their sources of information but integral to their identity. Harris’ calculated rhetoric made many rootless men feel dismissed, while rambling Trump signified that he was one of his “bros” no matter how ludicrous his takes were on a factual level. The “frat bro” stereotype reduces young men to mindless jocks with short attention spans, built for lifting and swiping right on Tinder, but their podcasts are often multiple-hour-long conversations covering complex cultural and philosophical topics.

To address “what can be done,” scholars can start by abandoning their archaic notions about the epidemiological unseriousness of the bro’s new public sphere. Lastly, I would like to end with a famous quote by Hannah Arendt that illuminates the naivety of invalidating the male loneliness epidemic as a misogynistic attempt to steal the spotlight away from women. In the last sentences of Origins of Totalitarianism, she wrote, “what prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in old age, has become an everyday experience of the growing masses of our country”. (Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 478)

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