The Big Reason we all missed Gen Z Men veered to the Right.

In 1989, the seminal rap group N.W.A released their genre-defining album, Straight Outta Compton. The album scandalised the uber-conservative George HW Bush administration with the track ‘Fuck Tha Police’ coming under particular fire, it being interpreted as a youthful and racial call to arms against the police force in America. Straight Outta Compton was one of the first records to get slapped with the Parental Advisory – Explicit Content labels, a sticker that would become one of the defining

symbols of the 1990’s, and one many believe was enforced more liberally with rap music than any other genre – with obvious racial connotations.

However, the Parental Advisory labels backfired massively and became a kind of countercultural badge of honour. Artists wanted that doomy black and white label because it signalled the contents therein were dangerous and from NWA to Marilyn Manson, the film Kids to Eminem, the kids wanted the parental advisory branded artists and art, and it did much for their sales, status and popularity. If you look at concert and music festival footage from the ‘90’s, they are a sea of young people wearing Parental Advisory – Explicit Content t-shirts. Artists today couldn’t buy that kind of countercultural endorsement.

Of course, the ‘90’s weren’t the only decade of symbolic youthful rebellion against the crushing and finger-wagging system. Since WW2, every generation of teenagers have sought to outrage the oldies, and whether it was the Teddy Boys of the ‘50’s, the Mods and Rockers in the ‘60’s, punk in the 70’s, the original gender-bending aesthetic of the ‘80’s or gangster rap in the ‘90’s, teens have globally and generationally had a great time pissing the parents, press and government the f’ off!

And then sometime in the late nineties/early 2000’s there was a peculiar generational shift. As Gen X and then older millennials – two generations who came of age being pretty cool with civil rights, women’s rights, LGBT rights but also progressive culture whether it was rock, rap, or indie cinema – began to intersect culturally and taste-wise with their kids. Rather than scream at the kids to ‘turn the music down!’ they were more likely to yell ‘turn it up!’ The cultural icons of Gen X and Millennials like Snoop Dogg, Eminem, the Beastie Boys (RIP Adam Yauch) and Noel Gallagher were no longer dangerous or rebellious but suddenly showed up in places like the White House, No. 10, serious news programmes and also had kids of their own – who would become the new generation of Nepo Babies, but more on that on another day…..

But this presented a problem for their kids.

If you have parents who like your music, like your tattoos, don’t care if you’re sexually or gender fluid, don’t care how you wear your hair, supported your socialist phase and went to go to the same gigs and festivals as you…..how on earth do you rebel?

For #GenZ (1996-2009), the rebellion possibilities sucked, particularly as they became teenagers themselves. But then around 2014, culture began to shift. Internet subcultures whether it was 4Chan, alternative politics, or gaming became more prolific but also gained a more lawless and dangerous reputation. They were soaked in language, memes and jokes that began to shock other parts of society and older people in particular who crucially didn’t understand or like them. Over the next decade controversial online figures emerged (some with more staying power than others) and everyone from Milo Yiannopolous, Logan Paul, Peter Thiel, Andrew Tate to the real grandfather of the controversial online bros – Donald Trump – became the new leaders of these online movements. Their entire MO was to undermine the squishy wokeness of the preceding years and ‘piss of the libs’ and whether they did this with pranks, opinions or politics, it certainly worked, and everything became more oppositional and tribal.

The politics of these popular online bros tended to fall somewhere between libertarian and hard-right, but basically anything but liberal, inclusive, or one of the defining words of the last couple of years, woke.

Acres of coverage has been given to why these right-leaning online movements have appealed to Gen Z young men in particular, but the evidence is there. Globally, Gen Z men are voting right to hard right, and this has played out in America, Germany, Poland, Italy, Australia etc….it remains to be seen if Gen Z men will go for the Reform Party in the UK at the next elections. There is evidence to suggest younger men have tired of more left-leaning politics that they perceive as having alienated them for years in their talk of toxic masculinity and their tendency to raise up any other group but them – socially, economically or culturally.

But one of the things that’s been missed, is the countercultural appeal of the Right and their online tribes. Going back to the absence of opportunities to rebel for Gen Z, particularly if you had a cool, feminist Gen X Dad or a millennial Mum with a great career who both liked the same films and music as you, suddenly the cool, new Right who looked and sounded nothing like old-school Conservatives, with their Pepe the Frogs, anti-feminist screed and shockingly nihilistic 4Chan jokes and in-house humour were scaring the parents and oldies again! Online tribes that the older, often now more liberal generations didn’t understand and were worried about beckoned younger generations, and they appealed to boys and young men in particular with their fuck feelings, fuck feminism and fuck fairness – let’s have some nasty fun – mantra.

Pepe the Frog became Gen Z’s men version of the ‘Parental Advisory’ stickers with its kind of IYKYK wink to all kind of online naughtiness that had been banned in the politically correct, cancel culture that had gone before. Like punk in the ‘70’s or gangster rap in the ‘90’s it wasn’t nice – but that was kind of the point and the appeal.

And now this new Right-wing movement has become both the mainstream and the dominant culture. It’s expanded way beyond predominantly white right-wing bros, with, for example, record numbers of Black and Hispanic Gen Z men voting for Donald Trump in the 2024 election – completely defying some of the rather cringey liberal stereotypes about them.

Now that the underground, countercultural appeal of the Right no longer exists and they have become the political mainstream, it will be interesting to see if Gen A and even Gen Beta – girls and guys – now rebel against that and who will become their Gen Z parents and Dads in particular. Youthful uprisings on a national scale haven’t happened in most democracies in decades, but as the world gets crueller, more repressive, and draconian particularly for certain groups – and as history doesn’t repeat itself but often rhymes – maybe Gen Alpha or Beta will grab those boots and banners again and start marching again for oppressed groups or because they’ve become those repressed groups – because by the looks of things, there are going to be plenty of groups and causes to march for.