Conservatives have rightly denounced the extremist tendency among young progressives, but there’s a similar problem now evident on the Right. A new Manhattan Institute study of Generation-Z Republicans confirms this problem, with some embracing conspiracy theories, including antisemitic ones, that were once the domain of the conservative lunatic fringe.

The think tank put together a group of 20 young conservatives, mostly supporters of Trump. What it found was a group “marked by desensitization”. They viewed politics as a form of entertainment, more like a video game. To them, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, despite their promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories, are not excluded from conservatism; even where their views are disavowed, they are treated as legitimate fixtures of the movement.

The roots of these disturbing shifts likely lie in the impact of social media and a startling lack of historical knowledge. The Survey Center on American Life confirms that young adults have become increasingly distant from their families and from one another. Instead, they tend to experience the world through the prism of social-media self-expression. As one recent report notes, they are far more focused on themselves than previous generations.

According to academic Jean Twenge, the online world brings “instant communication and unrivaled convenience” but also leaves young people “more isolated from each other” and more polarised, creating “a mental health crisis among teens and young adults”. The new ideal is to optimise the self; interactions with other people, particularly those with different views, are increasingly rare.

For the politically engaged, on both Right and Left, politics increasingly functions as another mode of self-expression. Among women this tendency skews Leftward, while among men it skews Right. For conservatives, this means grappling with an emerging, largely youthful constituency which is prone to conspiracy thinking and increasingly willing to adopt views that include Holocaust denial and open antisemitism.

Some may argue that these troubling trends are merely transitory. After all, many who embraced the far Left during the Vietnam War later became patriotic citizens, and some even turned into Reaganites. Yet much of this shift was tied to young people eventually assuming adult responsibilities: spouses, homes, children. Many in the new generation either reject these paths or see them as unattainable. Unable to establish stable adult lives, they may cultivate a politics that is unanchored, alienated, and potentially violent.

The past often serves as a great brake on future insanity, but not if it is not known. Young Americans on the Left turn to socialism in part because they have little to no knowledge of its greatest test case, the former Soviet Union. Meanwhile on the Right, the embrace of Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes points to very limited knowledge of the Second World War as well as the Holocaust. Millions uncritically listen to the bizarre theories that blame Churchill and the Jews for the war, excusing Hitler and the Nazis.

Ignorance may be blissful for some, but a generation that knows little other than what they learn from social media represents a profound threat to democratic institutions and the society that they will inevitably inherit.

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Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute, the University of Texas at Austin.

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