Dr. Jeff Myers shares that if we want the rising generation to fight for America’s future, not against it, we must make deradicalizing them a top priority. To read the full article, go to The Daily Wire.
On Saturday, a 20-year-old white male came within a quarter inch of throwing the greatest nation in the world into chaos. While little is known about this young man, Gen Z’s response to the assassination attempt is alarming. By Sunday, the hashtag #theymissed began trending on social media, with some 20,000 posts expressing sadness or anger that Donald Trump was not killed.
Signs of radicalization have been growing. Last December, a Harvard poll showed that 60% of Gen Z thought Hamas’s slaughter of innocent Israelis was justified. What does this portend for the future of our nation?
Looking back, it seems that President Biden’s claim that Trump is “literally a threat to everything America stands for” and his boast of putting Trump in the “bullseye” were not just unwise but menacing.
The political spirit of our age is one of demonization. Campaigns have always been spicy, but the adoption of fascist and communist rhetorical tactics has put the whole system into overdrive. Lenin sparked mass rage by dehumanizing his opponents as “cretins” and “filthy scum.” Saul Alinsky repackaged Lenin’s diabolical strategy in “Rules for Radicals.” “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon,” Alinsky gloated. “There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule.”
Older adults dismiss hateful campaign rhetoric as nothing more than “angry-old-man-speak.” Young adults, on the other hand, take things much more literally and become filled with fear and anger.
When kids are terrified, their reactions can be unpredictable and irrational. Sometimes they resort to violence. Or bullying. Or, often, they turn against themselves in self-harm. This is especially true for boys, whose testosterone and still-developing moral compass are like a powerful engine without a steering system.
Decades of research show that young adults become radicalized in three steps:
First, isolation. The primary isolation tactic is to incite unrelenting fear, which is fed by the “omnicause” in which young adults are coaxed to be angry and filled with shame about everything.
To read the full article, go to The Daily Wire.