This boy was lying to me. I realized the way he turned in his chair, sponging and then giving palmaditas in his hairy. I realized the prayers rehearsed that fed me, his boring and monotonous voice. “I am a white man,” he said. “I have many advantages in the world.”
Normally, I would have felt pleased that he has recognized his privilege. It is rare for a teenager to admit that he is systematically advantageous. But his eyes were glazed, and he was checking the time on his phone. I knew I wasn't going to tell me the truth unless I gave him permission.
So I stopped the recording I was doing and I leaned down, telling him that I was not trying to cancel it for racist or sexist opinions. I just wanted to listen to your perspective. And when I restarted the voice memorandum of my phone, I was talking to a different person. He knew what he meant; I simply did not think I would like to listen to it. All he took was permission to eliminate his progressive facade. This did not surprise me because I know he is not alone.
TO survey Made in the spring of 2025, he showed that only 7% of men between 18 and 29 thought that diversity, equity and inclusion programs helped them. This is aligned with the surveys you find 54% of men in the same age range voted for President Trump. Trump's approval numbers have refused Among young people, but liberalism continues to lose the children of my age because of the ideology of the light, which is exactly what I heard from my classmate when that facade fell.
He knew that the bustling speakers like Charlie Kirk and Joe Rogan flooded food on the social networks of adolescents and young men. I wanted to see if this was true even in my own secondary school on New York City. In mid -April, I set out to interview adolescents in my life. I needed to know if the children that mattered to me, who had hopes, subscribed to digital Internet misogyny.
I suspected that young people, especially whites and heterosexuals, moved to the right because they felt unpleasant to the left. The fear of being “canceled” has been rooted in many adolescents, children in particular, who attend liberal schools since 2020, when many came to see the culture of cancellation as a threat that results in life. It was a small step from fearing the culture of canceling to “wakeism”.
To start an interview, I opened my laptop and took four videos: two by Joe Rogan of his podcast, the first to talk about open borders and immigration and the second in transgender athletes. One of Andrew Tate ranting about the evils of the Wokeism and one of Charlie Kirk discussing systemic racism with a black university student. Among the clips, I asked my classmates why they thought they would be attractive or persuasive for young men.
The first answer I received was about aesthetics. “You can see in the video you have built,” said a Senior, who had to put the interview just before a baseball game. “Athletes are some of the biggest models to follow for teenagers.” The appearance mention raised his head again when a second year student described Rogan as “very masculine.” The interviewee, wearing a salminete and a white tank t -shirt shirt, explained that “a bald boy with a deep voice” is more attractive than “a 25 -year -old.”
The other recurring theme was that these high school children saw the powerful rhetoric and fear they saw on my computer screen. Rogan's opinions about immigration “Connect with this idea of being under attack,” said a Junior child. White men are “under siege,” he added. Is this true? I asked. It does not matter, he replied: an extreme rhetoric like that “makes everything simple and quotable.”
It was only when I asked these children if they were liberals that obtained an indication that they did not really support the men in the videos. Almost all of these teenagers told me that they were liberals and yet they could see the appeal of the light.
The rest of us cannot afford to wait. This half of the population should feel at home to the left. Democrats must be aware of welcoming young people who do not agree with all progressive policies, ensuring that they are still offered a seat on the table to help create a more fair and equitable country.
The divisive appeal on the other side has proven to be powerful. “From what I have seen,” one of my classmates told me, the liberals “say all this [negative] Things about White young and Trump no. … Why would we get behind the fortune for ourselves? “The president seems to be the champion of a group that will overcome him: young white men who feel that the liberals have made them an enemy.
The Democratic Party is not really Antiwhite or Antimale, of course, but it is not enough to say that. Democrats must make it clear that they welcome the support of people who may not agree with all aspects of the left's agenda. Relatability is also important: leaders must go where young people are and be pleasant. “Going to podcasts can help,” said a Junior child when asked what the Democrats do to communicate with the younger public. “They need to obtain points of view.”
These classmates of mine are a few years after voting. It is your responsibility to fight for a healthy speech, for spaces outside Instagram and Tiktok to talk about politics. Do not consider disagreement with the enemy of the unit, consider the necessary springboard. Demand a space on the left. There is work to do, a lot of work. But I have the faith that my classmates will vote in the future with their mothers and sisters in mind. I just hope not to be naive to think that.
Naomi Beinart is a high school student in New York.
