Something interesting began spreading around the internet like wildfire around the time early voting started. It was a meme that focused on the character Anakin Skywalker from the Star Wars prequels. If you've never seen them, Anakin is the one who ends up becoming Darth Vader in the Star Wars original trilogy.
The meme was being circulated by what were mostly younger people, typically younger Millennials and Gen Z men, and apparently the point behind the meme was that Anakin represented their complete disillusionment with the current system. This wasn't something being tossed around by leftists in any way, either. It was centrist to right-leaning young men.
Before I knew it, Anakin memes were flooding social media, and soon, commentary videos were popping up left and right analyzing this new development.
The best breakdown I saw about it probably came from Carl Benjamin, also known as Sargon of Akkad on YouTube. As he explains, the Zoomers can truly see themselves in the character of Anakin, a displaced young man who was thrown into a world on the verge of great change that not only needed him but sneered at him simultaneously. As Benjamin notes, Zoomers were born into what he called a post-liberal world where young men are vilified and discarded while still being needed.
"A bunch of promises were made to Anakin through the Boomer-liberal viewpoint... that are just not correct and are just not actually true," said Benjamin.
What I find fascinating here is the abandonment of that "liberal" ideal, as Benjamin, an Englishman, calls it — or western idealism, as I often refer to it — in favor of something that has been villainized all my life as an elder millennial.
The closest thing I can say these Zoomers are now embracing is fascism.
@MorseReport becoming?? https://t.co/gA8AezHJpd
— Djinnt (@DjinntXBT) October 31, 2026
I'm not going to say definitively that this is where the young right in this country is headed, but if I'm being wholly honest, I'm not going to rule it out, either. The reason is that the left has already committed to taking things to the extreme themselves, especially with the embrace of things like communism and radical Islam. Moreover, I think it's pretty clear from the polling that many young Americans see the Republican Party as insubstantial and impotent, failing to do what needs to be done even when they hold all the cards.
So, you have a disenchanted and disaffected group of young American men, mostly white, sick of being villainized by a society that withholds opportunity while still expecting them to step up and be the cogs that turn the machine. All they're promised is replacement and hate. You have leftist radicals killing them, women accusing them, ignoring them except to either use or abuse them, and all the while, you have a sense of old-school morality preaching to them that everything happening to them is fair for one reason or another.
It makes total sense that radicalization would follow.
I'm not sure how this will develop, but I imagine as time goes on, young American men will only become angrier at their treatment and, especially with the radical left acting out the way they do, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see something of a radical right pop up and begin fighting fire with fire. After the midterms were such a sweep for the left, and with many warning that they would abuse power in all the ways they said they would, I can only see the fires getting more and more stoked.
People have had the words "civil war" on their lips from time to time. Personally, I don't see anything like a North vs. South situation happening, but I can 100 percent see two political sides having something like a joint riot where war zones take place in one street in a city one day, and in another street in another city the next.
I hope I'm wrong and this can all be solved peacefully, but the issue is that the left has made it clear that peace is not on the table if they can help it.
I expect to see radical elements of both sides start popping up violently at some point in the near future.
