Of Course Gen Z Is Moving To The Right

A Fox weekend headline declared that “data show Gen Z ‘most conservative’ generation in decades.” The real question is: Why are we shocked? Gen Z’s lives have been entirely dominated by the lies and failures that the left and the Democrat Party have perpetrated. 

Following on the heels of Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials, Generation Z is comprised of individuals born between 1997 and 2012. For such individuals, the ascendancy of the left and the Democrat Party has dominated their lives. According to Gallup polling, in 1997 (the first year of Gen Z) 28 percent of Democrats described their views as liberal (as opposed to conservative or moderate); in 2023, 54 percent chose that description.

Obama was elected president in 2008 and served for eight years of their lives. The Obama administration was the furthest left in American history (though Obama assiduously sought to hide it) until the Biden administration supplanted it. Those twelve years of Obama and Biden encompassed the majority of Gen Z’s formative years. 

Outside those twelve years, the left continued its ascendancy in American culture. Even when they didn’t hold the White House, leftists — operating from their enclaves in deep blue cities and states, the worlds of academia, entertainment, sports, media, and even business — have steered Gen Z’s society toward failure upon failure.

Gen Z simply has no memory of anything else. From classrooms to the workplace, they have encountered a Berlin Wall of DEI initiatives. It is no wonder that (having been so forced-fed) they cynically say DEI stands for “didn’t earn it.”

The #MeToo movement also dominated a large portion of Gen Z’s lifespan, portraying men as implicitly suspect and putting boys under a microscope, — except when the left and Democrats cynically forget what’s inconvenient for them (e.g., the various allegations against Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, and Andrew Cuomo, who is now running for the Democrat nomination for NYC mayor).

Of course, Covid dominated Gen Zers’ lives and consciousness as it did with no other generation. From start to finish, the left’s responses to Covid were an enormous manipulation — business closures, enforced isolation, and above all school shut-downs. The result has been an astronomical loss of learning, declining public school attendance, and absenteeism. And all these effects fall fully on Gen Z, along with the global instability, open borders, crime, and homelessness fostered by leftist policies.

In science class for their entire lives, they have heard Chicken Little climate change alarms that the sky is falling (or cooling, or warming, or just “changing” — with every conceivable meteorological problem attributed to it). The “experts” have warned them that there will be some point of no return (a point in the future that stays forever dangling like the sword of Damocles but never falling). 

In social thought, Gen Z has received the most leftist indoctrination in American history. Collectively subjects of a groupthink worthy of Orwell, Gen Z has been injected with social justice, radical transgenderism, and CRT, and who knows what other doctrines from the left’s policy petri dish. 

Not surprisingly, the result has been a Marxist malaise. Those on the left are routinely polled as the least happy. How could they be otherwise? Everything from the left is negative and depressing: woke and cancel culture and antisemitism under the facade of pro-Hamas rallies. All are modern bastardizations of Marxist ideology that sees the world as consumed in exploitation, conflict, and class struggle. Naturally, such thinking consumes those who consume it. 

All of this indoctrination has been most focused on Gen Z, making it the most leftist-bombarded generation in American history. Additionally, they are the most connected generation in history. Naturally, they can easily discern the obvious and communicate about the left’s dysfunctional discrepancies — just 26 percent of 18-29-year-olds (tied for lowest) had trust and confidence in the mass media, according to Gallup polling.

After all this, the mystery is not that Gen Z is the “most conservative generation in decades;” it is that Gen Z isn’t even more conservative. Likely, as they age, Gen Z will be, joining earlier age cohorts in growing more conservative with the addition of life experience. This too won’t be surprising. After all, Gen Z’s conservativism has come from being on the receiving end of the left’s mistakes — wait until it’s their children’s turn in the barrel. 

J.T. Young is the author of the recent book “Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left” from RealClear Publishing and has more than three decades’ experience working in Congress, the Department of Treasury, the Office of Management and Budget, and representing a Fortune 20 company.