I think progressives never thought about this because we banked on immigration and demographic change allowing us to win culturally and electorally but the issue is immigrants tend to be overwhelmingly male, that is how Trump won actually he won over a lot of Hispanic,Black,Asian and indigenous men who feel humiliated by a new culture, economy and world.
So what can we do rhetorically and policy wise to win more young men over ?
It’s not a rhetorical problem. It’s a propaganda problem. People aren’t being reasoned into right wing politics. It’s being beaten into their heads day and night by talk radio, cable news, local news, and YouTube; and this has been going on very deliberately for decades. The right wing powers-that-be have been busily, patiently, creating a massive, pervasive propaganda machine for a long time while the left sat on their hands. We’re now seeing the results: a world where the right can do and say literally anything they want without consequence. Their base is very literally brainwashed through brute force repeated messaging that nobody can compete with.
We needed the Democrats to do something about this propaganda machine before it became unstoppable. They already didn’t do that.
The best thing any of us can do is try to steer kids away from the propaganda before they get sucked in.
How do you do that, though? The rich and powerful aren’t going to suddenly start pouring their resources into progressive messaging, and there’s only so much you can do when you’re diametrically opposed to them.
this is the gordion knot that the “let’s respect the nazi’s viewpoint instead of mocking and ridiculing them” people have allowed us all to become tangled up in. fascists have been allowed to take over education, mass media, social media, news media, and every other possible channel of communication, making avoidance of their propaganda almost impossible, let alone keeping kids away. they’ve pretty much defeated public libraries, and next will be academic libraries and higher ed altogether. they don’t want anyone exploring any ideas that didn’t originate with the fascist regime
cult programming and mind control, after it’s already happened, is extremely difficult to reverse. used to be a team of people would have to involuntarily abduct a person and perform intense deprogramming methods over a course of days or weeks to get someone out of the cult mindset. and that was just for one single person. btw anyone who tries to tell you maga is not a full-blown textbook definition of cult is either part of the cult, or in denial of reality. same as the maga cult.
now we have millions of people simultaneously believing that they’re perpetual victims and also invincible and superior to their supposed “oppressors”-- anyone woke, women, mexicans, lgbtq…pretty much anyone who isn’t straight, white, male, evangelical, republican, nth generation citizens.
i wish i had a feasible answer, but the outlook is grim
As individuals, we can only influence our friends, family, and kids as best we can. Sometimes that’s not at all. We’re all now familiar with the trope of “Fox News ate my parents’ brains”.
This isn’t a game or a movie that necessarily has to have a happy ending. Sometimes shit’s just fucked. As long as the propaganda machine is in place, millions of people will be brainwashed.