Ep. 2012 - Why Is Gen-Z More Politically Extreme Than EVER?

**Michael Knowles** (0:00)
Gen Z is officially the most ideologically extreme generation that we have seen in almost 100 years. Sometimes they're chopping off their body parts and they're trans, sometimes they're Nazis. The most extreme among them are Nazis chopping their body parts off. But the numbers are in, they're extremely extreme. And no one seems to really appreciate why. There are a lot of theories about it. Some say it's affordability, it's because of the material conditions of their, maybe a little bit of that. Some say, oh, it's the darn TikTok, or maybe it's a little bit more of that. We will get to what is actually doing it, and then we will get to the medium, the artistic medium of our political moment, which we haven't covered before yet on this show, and that is the edit. We will get to the art of the edit. I'm Michael Knowles, this is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show. It's wonderful to be with you. I'm not really with you, by the way. I'm kind of secretly, virtually, kind of almost with you, because I, like many of you, am on a nice 4th of July vacation. I don't do it. I'm not a huge vacation guy, but I'm not gonna, look, I'll be back on Monday in the studio, but I couldn't leave you all the way. And actually, this really pertains to what we're talking about on the show today, which is what radicalized Gen Z, and maybe what we can do about it, and we'll get into the political edit. But I'll be back, we'll be here on Monday. There's a lot more to say first though, go to thecatholicherald.com promo code Knowles. One of the many reasons I enjoy reading GK Chesterton is that he had an annoying habit of being right about things 100 years before everyone else figured them out. Well, who did Chesterton write for? Chesterton wrote for the Catholic Herald. That publication is still around. It's a tremendous publication. In a media environment obsessed with the next outrage, I really appreciate and highly recommend a publication that has been thinking seriously about the Church for 137 years. Every day we're told about the latest app, the latest trend, the latest social media controversy and that it's all the most important thing happening in the world. Meanwhile, institutions that have shaped civilization for centuries are often covered as though they're just another political interest group. The Catholic Church is nearly 2,000 years old. It's one of the most influential institutions in human history. If you actually want to understand what's happening in the Church, why it matters, you need to take people, you need people rather, who take it seriously. Catholic Herald has been reporting on the life of the Church since 1888 It's just phenomenal. It's a tremendous, tremendous organization. GK Chesterton wrote for the Herald. Evelyn Wall wrote for the Herald. Monsignor Ronald Knox wrote for the Herald. Even J. R. R. Tolkien wrote letters to the editor, to the Herald. So right now, you can get 30 days of free access, just you, just you and some of our friends. But this is a special thing. Go to thecatholicherald.com, use promo code KnowlesKennedyWLES at checkout. Don't forget the the. thecatholicherald.com, promo code KnowlesKennedyWLES for 30 days of free access.
The extremism of Gen Z, I think that is totally without any kind of debate, right? I think everybody basically agrees with that. You got a massive rise in the LGBTQ ideology. NBC reported a couple years ago that 30% of Zoomers identify as LGBTQ, LMNOP, QRSTV. But that's very much in flux because it's all fake.
But that number has come down a little bit. Nevertheless, you see a lot of sexual radicalism and you see a lot of radicalism even on the right. The Zoomers are much more likely to be Nazis than previous generations. And this is not just anic data. You can see it come up in different reports. Here's one study. 14.5% of Gen Z respondents in a 2024 national survey described themselves as ideologically extreme. This is compared to 2.7% of millennials. So the Zoomers are many multiples more likely to call their ideology extreme than the millennials. And the millennials are pretty annoying too. You know, as a millennial myself, having lived through the rise of millennials, the political coming of age of millennials, that was really the Obama generation. And they were much more ideological than Gen X, the generation that comes immediately before us. Gen X is not ideological at all. That's the grunge generation, checked out. They didn't, they just kind of keep to themselves, do their own thing. No one talks about them. The Boomers obviously were much more ideological, but the Zoomers really put all of them to shame. And then there are real practical effects to this. It's not just like edgy commentary. According to Harvard Youth Poll, a relatively recent one shows that 39% say that political violence is acceptable under at least one circumstance. 28% when government violates rights, 12% for fraudulent elections, 11% when someone persists and promotes extremist beliefs. That 11% is really just the libs, the young libs justifying killing ordinary conservatives because they're promoting extremist beliefs. 10% of them show high acceptance of political violence. Obviously, we don't need survey data to show that this happened because we saw it all happen after the killing of Charlie Kirk. One more, I won't belabor the point on the numbers too much, but just one more pretty damning statistic.