There’s an anti-Left storm brewing among the once conservative/libertarian Generation Z, which follows a predictable and dangerous path that’s left a trail of destruction throughout history.

It came to light in the split between Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson last week over Carlson’s platforming of Nick Fuentes, the virulent antisemitic, pro-Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler-adoring, Holocaust-denying influencer, who’s become the heroic voice of Gen Z’s heterosexual white Christian men who have been devastated the hardest by America’s decline.

Shapiro called Carlson out for giving Fuentes an uncontested platform, leading to a bitter parting between two friends who had fought to preserve a conservative America.

The breakup of a bromance between alternative-conservative media heavyweights made headlines.

But the real story is the anti-left’s disturbing path, which feeds on Fuentes’s galling rhetoric, that’s becoming their uncontested rallying cry.

Gen Z is mad as hell and turning their anger to the usual cast of scapegoats: Jews, women, immigrants, minorities, Baby Boomers, and government conspiracies. We’ve seen this play before, and we know the results.

Gen Z is waking up to the reality that they’re inheriting the overwhelming problems of a debilitated America that they didn’t create and can’t solve by relying on traditional conservative politics. They’re suffering consequences created by generations of Baby Boomer and GenX politicos who wrecked their shot at the American dream by sacrificing their future for short-term political wins years before they were born. Here’s what they face.

They’re the first entire generation that’s predicted to underachieve their parents’ success. They aren’t marrying, and when they do, their divorce rates are at an all-time high. They work for lower wages to earn inflated dollars that can’t purchase the homes, cars, food, and health care they need to survive. They can’t save for retirement and are forced to pay into the Social Security Ponzi scheme (from which they will receive nothing once it hits insolvency) to support the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers who screwed them while they were watching Dora the Explorer and struggling with puberty.

Their blood boils as they watch feminism smash masculinity, and illegals receive housing, health care, and every benefit under the sun that they can’t afford. A small non-descript Jewish nation in the Middle East gets copious amounts of foreign aid and disproportionate consideration in foreign policy, as Gen Z shoulders the constant anxiety of American involvement in foreign conflicts that squanders blood and treasure, but doesn’t serve America’s interests.

These are just the beginning of their grievance, and they’ve turned their ear to the Nick Fuentes types of the world to focus their anger on convenient scapegoats. It’s the consequence of feeling helpless in America’s dysfunctional democracy in the age of the internet, and their anti-left rage won’t be subsiding. They’ve identified the fatal glitch in the matrix of America’s democracy in a post-literate world, and these two factors will keep their ears glued to Fuentes and their blood boiling.

The anti-left is coming to terms with the limits of America’s democracy, which cannot provide solutions for a divided, decaying America. Strong words, but America’s system of governance has a glitch that cannot be solved. It was designed for moral and religious people united by a singular vision and is wholly inadequate to solve the problems created by the challenges of an immoral neo-Marxist post-Christian worldview gaining significant influence over the nation.

America is divided by two antithetical moral visions that are using government to conform the nation to their vision. The right holds to America’s founding vision of liberty and the individual’s right to choose their destiny in a Judeo-Christian society. The left wants individuals to surrender their freedom to achieve equity in a collectivist, post-Christian Utopia.

They are waging an ideological civil war for the future of America within a political system that was never designed for this fight. It’s safe to say the Founders never imagined Americans would ever reject the nation’s founding vision in favor of another to impose it from within.

Today, an immoral post-Christian vision has a hold on our government that it was neither designed nor equipped to deal with. The Constitution’s checks and balances were written for a country whose moral vision would restrain itself from embracing a transgender movement that would use government to write laws to destroy binary gender, forcing men into women’s protected spaces. Since such nonsense would never be a reality for moral and religious people, the Founders never included any clause that would reject such irreligious insanity once it became embedded in society, save one: revolution — the blood of patriots and tyrants that refreshes the tree of liberty.

Gen Z is willing to take Jefferson at his word.

Their anger is rising as they are the first generation to come of age in the post-literate world. They’re no longer reading written material; they rely on the internet’s echo chamber for their information, which is a perfect breeding ground for feelings of loss, powerlessness, and resentment. It’s the milieu that’s giving rise to the Nick Fuenteses of the world and fueling their fire.

Written material has an intrinsic mechanism that keeps us centered in truth—editorial oversight that fact-checks reality before anything goes to print or to air. It’s the critical factor that determines whether the truths that guide our moral vision are grounded in and accurately reflect reality. It’s the reason you unknowingly rely on American Thinker’s editors to separate the intellectuals from the nut jobs to provide trustworthy content — not so in the intellectual wild west of the internet.

Anyone with an iPhone and a YouTube channel becomes an influencer by spewing fact-free post-truth narratives and specious conspiracy theories that touch raw emotions and helpless frustrations. It becomes the perfect breeding ground for the likes of Nick Fuentes, who can say whatever they choose, building massive followings and big paydays with zero oversight to rein in their misogynist, antisemitic, Holocaust denying, bigoted, incendiary rhetoric aimed at every group or ideology that’s perceived as causing America’s downfall.

Gen Z is listening and agreeing in solidarity. None of this is to be taken lightly.

Today’s cultural iconoclasts have a power and reach that is unheard of in history. Their influence travels ideas at the speed of light, connecting with anyone who has a phone, and it’s fueling the frustrations of younger generations, who are abandoning traditional conservative politics and reasoned discourse.

They intuitively understand that the glitch in American democracy makes traditional solutions near impossible — political solutions are wholly inadequate to address the cultural immolation caused by America’s ideological civil war. The post-literate world of the web gives a voice to their rage over a dysfunctional America that was broken long before they had a vote and a voice to say, “What the hell are you leaving us? Look what you’ve done to us.”

They’re inheriting a mess they didn’t create but are being forced to solve. If they must solve it, they’ll do so on their terms.

If that means turning away from traditional conservatism and tuning in to Fuentes to preserve their future, then so be it.

Chuck Mason (MDiv, Fuller Seminary) is a conservative Christian author and social commentator. You can read his perspectives at www.chuckmason.net.

Image generated by ChatGPT.