Gen Z Has Been Groomed for Radicalization

For those wondering who started the Palisades Fire in early 2025, investigators have found a culprit: Jonathon Rinderknecht, a 30-year-old leftist who admired Luigi Mangione and wanted to punish billionaires. Although he has pled not guilty and blamed the fire on fireworks, he said that if a person really did start the Palisades Fire, “it would be out of resentment of the rich.” He also “compared such a fire to the murder for which Mr. Mangione was charged.”

If the story of a leftist man in his 30s committing a heinous crime and effectively throwing his life away for dubious reasons sounds familiar, that is because this was also the profile of Cole Allen, who tried to assassinate President Trump and his cabinet at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner just the other week. In case anyone was confused about his motives, the painfully sophomoric manifesto he wrote right before the event made it clear he believed Trump was the evil villain and that drastic action was needed.

Although Allen will almost certainly face conviction and a long prison sentence, he did at least receive an apology from Judge Zia Faruqui last week for his rough treatment in detention. Apparently, Allen was placed in a padded cell and not allowed to have any personal items or reading materials. This unpleasant boredom prompted the judge to tell Allen that he was “very troubled by…the conditions that you have been subjected to.” This same judge has also maintained that Allen presented a “lower threat to jail safety than some defendants charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.” 

While both the crimes of Rinderknecht and Allen will understandably draw scorn from most Americans, it’s difficult not to feel pity for them as well. These are two men in their prime, living in a land of abundant opportunities, who are clearly brainwashed losers. Rather than strive in a career, marry and start a family, and give back to their communities, they purposely secluded themselves in their bedrooms and spent the bulk of their waking life on social media, uncritically consuming endless leftist slop and losing their grip on reality.

Worse still, neither of them is being idolized by their like-minded peers. If anything, most would-be fans of Rinderknecht and Allen seem either to ignore them (in the former’s case) or feel embarrassed by them (in the latter’s case).

However, it is important to note that to pity them is not the same as to excuse, justify, or forgive them. It only means feeling sadness for something that is fundamentally wrong and pathetic. All of this was avoidable, and no one can cite the usual rationales of poverty, insanity, or abuse to explain it. These otherwise healthy men were deeply misled and did horrible things for the dumbest reasons.

Naturally, people following these two stories have debated which person or organization radicalized these criminals, and most people now agree that it was mainstream leftist media, which has uniformly ratcheted up its rhetoric against Trump and his supporters, equating them to Nazis, white supremacists, and perverts. Even though this invective is routinely debunked, such corrections curiously never make it into the newsfeeds of most progressive Americans.

Obviously, the propaganda put out by corporate media is a serious problem in need of immediate reform; yet trying to shut down or censor these outlets, besides being illegal and largely unfeasible, would likely not prevent more instances of leftist radicalization. As I explained on the most recent episode of my podcast, the real factor behind the radicalization is the surrounding context brought about by screens and high-speed internet.

Like many Zoomers today, Rinderknecht and Allen lived in voluntary isolation. They had no friends, no family, and no wife or girlfriend to tell them they were becoming delusional. Instead, they had random users on Reddit and Bluesky, along with prominent media figures, telling them that Trump was worse than Hitler and that billionaire oligarchs are somehow enslaving Americans. Furthermore, this messaging was all buttressed by so many other influences that reduced these men into compliant dupes.

As writer and researcher Freya India documents in her new book, GIRLS®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything, online media is designed to make users insecure, antisocial, and miserable. Although her focus is on young women growing up with the Internet, the effect is similar with young men. Faced with a barrage of pornography, toxic influencers, and addictive scrolling apps, young male users are pulled away from the stabilizing and rationalizing forces of family, friends, and faith. They become lazy, weak, nihilistic, and resentful—and this is well before they imbibe those leftist narratives demonizing conservatives, Christians, and white people.

As this happens, parents, teachers, and other authority figures are largely oblivious to this development. Many will feign ignorance—and in their defense, no one really knew what the Internet would do to a generation of kids who grew up with it. Still, it was never mandatory to buy their teenagers smartphones, and parents always had tools at their disposal to monitor their children’s Internet use. They could have, and should have, pulled the plug as soon as they noticed the dark turn in their children. They could have, and should have, disciplined themselves with their screens and made more time for their children before Big Tech groomed them for extremism.

It is difficult to overstate the extent of the problem, which has made fruitful public discourse and civil harmony near impossible. The country now has to find a way to successfully deal with a generation of radicalized and dysfunctional men and women or risk falling into terminal decline. In addition to a renewed commitment from the parents of this generation, who should know better by now, the rest of society needs to recognize the problem for what it is and proceed accordingly.

Rather than granting ever more mercy and compassion for the disturbed young adults (like Judge Faruqui seems all too ready to give), what these not-so-young adults really require is more honesty and clarity. The Internet has warped their minds and deprived them of a healthy way of living. Constantly stimulated and misinformed, they have missed out on human connection, natural pleasures, and quiet reflection. Not only should they “touch some grass” but they need to be encouraged to stay outside as long as possible.

Additionally, Christians should make it their mission to eliminate and counteract the host of corruptive sources burdening souls and replace them with the divine Source that illuminates what is truth and inspires what is good and beautiful. Perhaps such an effort to finally turn away from the their sirens on their devices is what is bringing young men unexpectedly back to the Church. Whatever the case may be, it is an uphill battle that sets them apart from so many of their peers. But it is far better than becoming the next otherwise “normal” terrorist giving up on life and tearing his world apart for nothing.